Backstage 41: Into the Abyss
by Aadler
Summary: During the summer '98 search for Buffy, a harried Watcher has to deal with another problem, in another city.
1. Part 1

**Into the Abyss**  
by Aadler  
**Copyright August 2014**

* * *

Disclaimer: Characters from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ and _Angel: the Series_ are property of Joss Whedon,  
Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

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Part I

The first time I saw him was as a silhouette, because I keep the lights low in my sanctuary (to make it easier to read the computer screens, I explained to occasional visitors, but the truth was that I drew comfort from the darkness and seclusion), and when he opened the door he was backlit by the brighter illumination of the hallway. At his appearance I felt a momentary stab of … something, not fear but perhaps a brief, wordless uncertainty as to whether I _should_ feel alarm. Which was ridiculous, and I allowed none of my baseless uneasiness to show as I asked with controlled politeness, "Can I help you?"

"I, um, I'm not sure." His voice was soft, cultured, resonant, hesitant, and British. Quite a lot communicated in five syllables. "I, that is I was told, er … this is the, the 'morgue'?" He still stood in the doorway, as if not feeling himself permitted to enter without an explicit invitation. "They gave me directions, but I'm afraid I got turned around."

Reassured, I smiled. "Yes, that's the labyrinth." I beckoned him inside with a quick finger-flick, adding, "And this is the Abyss. Abandon hope, and all that."

"The —?" He shook his head and stepped into the room, but still stood well outside anything that could be construed as my personal space. Considerate of him. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's what they call this place." I gestured at our surroundings. "Not sure how it started — maybe because we're in a sub-sub-basement, and so few people come down here —" _(or because I keep it dark to discourage visitors, not that I need to try very hard)_ "— but it caught on. And I'm the lucky custodian." I shrugged. "And now _you're_ here. On purpose, apparently."

"Well, yes." I could see him more clearly now: a few years older than me, early to mid-forties; formal suit with an actual vest (and was that tweed?); unruly short hair, wire-framed eyeglasses, firm chin, alertness in his eyes. Not quite in sync with the occasional stammer, and I cautioned myself not to take anything for granted. "I made enquiries upstairs, and was told I should come here to consult with you." He eyed me appraisingly. "That is, of course, if you're the Ms Schoeren I was to see."

"I'm Jane Schoeren, yes." I pulled a swivel chair from the next table, turned it toward him. "Have a seat. If you actually came looking for me … well, nobody comes looking for me. So now I'm curious."

Most people were uncomfortable, trying to deal with another person under circumstances that called for office-social etiquette, but with lighting so subdued as to communicate an instinctual _this is not normal_ awareness. If he felt any such uneasiness, it didn't show; he sat in the offered chair, somehow managing in the act to scoot it backward a few inches so as to put us less nearly knee-to-knee, and favored me with a tiny smile of his own. "I suppose I should introduce myself: my name is Rupert Giles. I'm here because … well, I asked upstairs about the particulars of an article that appeared in yesterday's paper, and was told that you would be the one most likely to have all the facts at hand." One of his eyebrows rose. "The young woman spoke of you with obvious respect, but still I got the sense that … er, that in sending me here she was …" He came to a halt, still looking for a polite way to finish the sentence.

"You were being given the brush-off," I confirmed for him. "You didn't have anything to offer them, dealing with you would use up their time, so they sent you to me. And they were right to do that." I smiled again, to show that no offense was felt. "My time really is less valuable than theirs, and I really do have quicker access to more consolidated information than anyone else here. Which is why they call on me whenever they need something."

"Ah." He glanced at the equipment with which I had surrounded myself. "You are a, um, computer virtuoso, then?"

"I wouldn't say that," I replied. "But I've been down here for nearly twelve years, and I've got to where I know all these files really well. Really, _really_ well."

He was nodding even as I finished. "In an organisation whose very purpose is to always pursue the news of the latest moment, you provide an … institutional memory, so to speak."

"More than that," I told him. "I'm the _city's_ memory." I sat back in my chair. "You know why they use the word 'morgue' for the place that stores a newspaper's previous issues? Because, in this business, an issue is dead the day after it hits the streets. Old news, yesterday's news … it doesn't matter, it isn't important, it _doesn't exist_ anymore. Unless someone needs it, in which case I'm here."

Again he was nodding. "I need no convincing of the importance of history. And yet, er … from things several of my students say, I would expect your co-workers to be convinced they could find whatever they needed via …" His lip actually curled at the next words. "… Internet searches."

"A lot of them do," I agreed. "And they're the ones who don't deal with me. But most here see this office — and me — as a resource they can use to good effect." I tilted my head as I studied him. "But you said something about your students. Mm … College instructor? I'm thinking a private academy, not well known but well funded, and with some prestige among the circle that know about it. Am I close?"

"It, um …" He blinked, suddenly flustered. "You flatter me. I'm, I'm actually here on leave from a small high school. Near Los Angeles, but far enough away to, to not be considered a suburb."

And there was something in his phrasing that told me he just had dodged my question in some way, though I wasn't sure just how, but I let it go for the moment. "Very well, Mr Giles. What, in this city, could interest a high school teacher from a not-quite-suburb?" My own thought was research of some type, an educated man pursuing some personal, abstruse project of his own. If so, I would aid him to the point where I lost interest, then briskly move him along, I had my own interests just now —

"The profile on the homeless women, found dead in the last few days," he said, and suddenly my interest was quite a bit sharper, because this was _not_ woolly-headed collection of esoteric minutiae. "I had hoped to speak with the author of the article, but was shunted to you instead. And, if you do indeed have the pertinent facts to hand, that will be eminently suitable to my purposes."

I regarded him with a calm assessment that allowed me to organize my thoughts before speaking. "And what _is_ your purpose here, exactly?"

His smile was small, rueful, and self-deprecating, but I could see that it was reflex rather than a true reflection of his own feelings; there was something going on behind those eyes, something that ran so deep that I knew he was giving me only a part of his attention. "The way that Americans handle certain … social disruptions, differs substantially from the way such things are dealt with in British society, enough to intrigue me. I simply wish to learn enough of the particulars to enable me to … to slot these differences into a meaningful context."

He was lying, and normally that in itself would be sufficient to have me cut him off and send him away with nothing. However, "You mentioned the homeless women," I observed, watching his reaction to the words. "Not the 'important' people who've been getting all the attention this past week. Two local bigwigs go missing and it grabs all the headlines, while nobody's paid any notice to these nameless bag-ladies even though they were murdered. That was the whole point of the article, the contrast in publicity … and yet you're the exact opposite, it's the nobodies who interest you. Why is that?"

He looked back with what seemed to be a small but genuine bewilderment. "Because, as you say, the 'nobodies' were killed. Rather brutally, it appears. By comparison, celebrity escapades are inconsequential, at least as they currently stand."

I arched one eyebrow. "Two prominent women disappear, for no known reason, and without leaving any word or clue. And you call that inconsequential?"

And there it was, something fleeting in his gaze or the set of his mouth: he had _reasons_ for what interested him and what didn't, and he didn't want to talk about those reasons. "To the extent that the case of the more well-known women needs or deserves attention," he said with precise control, "it is, as the article in question points out, receiving more than sufficient. In addition to that, the disappearances are a mystery but … but a mystery without details, whereas the killings doubtless have a great deal of detail, about which I wish to learn. It is, if you will, a more _rewarding_ focus of study."

And he was lying again. He expressed it well, with a quiet intensity that should have been convincing, but I simply knew better, as if attuned to him in a way that allowed me to see deeper truth. This unexpected affinity made me feel somewhat disoriented, but I had some experience in hiding my feelings. And, though he had given me triple justification to expel him without information, there were now things _I_ wanted to know. So it was decided.

"I'm due for my 'lunch' hour," I told him, air-quoting the word in recognition that it was late evening rather than mid-day. "Did you see the coffee shop across the street?"

He nodded. "Yes, I did."

"Get me a cup and a cream cheese Danish, and I'll be able to join you in ten, fifteen minutes. It'll take me that long anyway to collect and print out the … the 'particulars', as you call them."

He was already standing. "I recognise that my interest has no especial importance to you," he said. "I deeply appreciate your assistance in this matter."

"Don't thank me yet," I told him. "This is a weird one, and I'm not sure that the facts I can give you will be much help."

"It will be more than I had," he replied. "Again, you have my gratitude."

Then he was gone, and I settled in to gather the promised background information. I had enough familiarity with the files and systems that I could do it almost automatically, leaving more than enough of my mind free to wonder just what he was doing here. And why.

It was actually more than twenty minutes before I joined him at the coffee shop; good as I've come to be at what I do, I had quite a lot to take care of in a very short period, and even with the overtime I still slid into the seat across from him in the booth feeling like I'd just run a marathon at triple-speed. Paradoxically, however, the demand for total concentration had allowed a background portion of my mind to work undisturbed, so that when I arrived I already knew what I was going to say to him.

Which was, "Are you with the police?"

He paused in the act of pushing toward me the coffee and Danish he had ordered at my request. "I beg your pardon?" he asked.

"You were telling the truth about where you were," I went on. "But you still let me think you were a teacher. With your credentials, you could have come in as an automatic adjunct professor anywhere in the UC system, and that would still have been a step _down_ from your position at the British Museum. I can't imagine what would move you from that, to high school librarian. In Sunnydale."

An eyebrow lifted minutely. "You've been … quite industrious," he observed with unruffled calm.

Oh, I had. Along with the newspaper's channel through AP and Reuters and UPI, I had also used every online search engine available to me: Lycos, Hotbot, Yahoo, Webcrawler, Excite, AltaVista, Infoseek, Inktomi, Metacrawler, even a beta I was testing for a new one calling itself Google. Not having time for real in-depth digging, I'd just cast the widest net possible and snatched at the scattered facts I was able to scoop in on the first try. "Don't worry, I got the information I promised you." I put one hand on the manila folder I'd set on the tabletop. "But I wanted to have some idea who I was dealing with … and right off the bat, I could see you were ridiculously overqualified for what you're supposed to be. So, what, then?" I shook my head. "Interpol? Even MI-6? But even that wouldn't explain why you're _here,_ asking about _this._ It doesn't make sense."

"And for good reason," Giles observed. "I am, in fact, neither a member of, nor affiliated with, any law enforcement agency whatsoever. American, British, European, or otherwise. And my … regression, from associate curator to high school librarian —" His lips bent in a rueful quirk, convincing if not necessarily genuine. "That may be a matter of minor embarrassment to me, but it is decidedly _not_ part of any deception I am working upon you to your detriment. I am, as I told you, seeking to learn more about those events" (a nod toward the folder) "purely from my own personal interest. If you are willing to help me, you have my gratitude. If not, I shall simply enquire elsewhere."

I looked him over closely, as if concentrated vision could allow me to peer beneath outward appearance to the underlying truth. "I only have your word for any of that."

"True," he acknowledged. "But, to be frank, why should it matter? I was directed to you as, as a _resource person,_ a guide to a central repository of facts held by the larger organisation. What would you, individually, have to fear from a request for information that does not directly pertain to you?"

"Good point," I said. "Only, maybe not as reassuring as you would think."

"Really?" His tone, and eyes, were level. "Why not?"

"Because I've been wondering if the local police _would_ come asking me questions," I told him. "Or, if they don't, whether I should go to them."

His gaze on me hadn't sharpened, but I could feel it … _increase,_ somehow. Even if he hadn't seemed inattentive before, I definitely had his full focus now. "Yes?" he said. "Why?"

"Two reasons." I kept my tone calm, both to match his and to keep close control of myself. This man was … dangerous … in ways he himself might not recognize. Might. "You need to understand: for most of my life, I intended to be a reporter myself. I learned, eventually, that I just don't have — quite — the right set of skills to succeed at that: hence, where I am now. But I still know how it works, I have the instincts and training that let me recognize the potential for a good story. So, now and then, looking at all the news that passes in front of me, I'll make a suggestion to some of the regulars upstairs. And now and then — especially if it's one of those who've learned that I can know what I'm talking about even if I'm _not_ one of them — a reporter or columnist will follow out on one of my suggestions."

This time he only nodded — _I'm following you, go on_ — so I did. "Well, one of the suggestions I made was about the article that brought you here. Drawing a contrast between the reaction to the disappearance of these high-profile women — the official reaction and the one from the media — with the _nothing_ reaction to the deaths of women nobody knows or cares about? that was my idea."

He was quick to see there had to be more to it than that. "Yes?" he prompted. "And?"

"Another idea was a series of profiles of local success stories. People who'd made it big from modest beginnings. Not exactly rags-to-riches, but definitely pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps stuff." I shrugged. "That one, Connie took in another direction. Dropped some of the people I'd lined out, brought in some of her own, and made it more 'look how great this city is, we have such successful people here!', where I'd been thinking 'look what people with talent and drive and luck can accomplish in a city like this'."

"A distinction that might seem too subtle to matter," Giles noted. "And yet I can see how it might make a considerable difference indeed." He gave me a slanted glance. "And?"

"Well, the idea I sent up was based on profiling five or six successful women. I only offered a couple of examples, and only one made it into the series Connie wound up doing; she did seven features in all, and six of them were men. Only … the two women who have disappeared, they were the two I mentioned in my first idea." I raised my eyes to meet his. "And, if I remember it right, they went missing in the same order I listed them out."

~ – ~ – ~

He was silent for nearly a minute, his gaze focused elsewhere while he visibly ran through multiple lines of thought. At last he said, "I can understand why you found this matter troubling. Even why you worried that you might, yourself, come to be subject of police enquiry." He took a sip from his own coffee … no, the liquid I could see in the cup was so light in color, I decided it must be tea. "But, why did you _not_ go to the police yourself?"

"Because it's all so recent," I said to him. "And so _vague._ Danica Carlisle and Amelie Linden … nobody knows where they are, but likewise nobody knows for sure that anything has happened to them. For all we know, they're off together at some private spa, sipping mojitos and dishing about their love lives. And the dead homeless women really _should_ be the bigger story. This whole thing could just be some freakish coincidence." I bit my lip. "That's what I keep telling myself. But …"

"But it troubles you," he finished for me. "The, the instincts to which you referred, tell you that such a coincidence is at the very least suspicious, and at the very least warrants closer inspection." He wasn't even looking at me, but it certainly seemed that he was fully engrossed in the situation I had sketched out for him. "Whether or not it means what you think it might, it certainly seems to mean _something._ And so you feel compelled to look more closely."

I took a bite from my Danish, and a sip from my coffee, before asking, "Are we still talking about me here?"

His gaze returned to me almost with a start. "I beg your pardon?"

"One second you were focused like a laser," I said to him. "The next, I could practically _see_ your mind going somewhere else." Actually, it was a bit reassuring, in that his allowing himself to muse on issues of his own gave me more reason to believe he wasn't here investigating me personally. Still, I made it almost a demand: "What was that all about?"

I watched him measure his thoughts before responding. I was gaining an ever clearer sense of what _kind_ of person I was dealing with, but that didn't help me guess what was running through his mind. "You are very perceptive," he answered at last. "Yes, you caught me in a moment of distraction, which has to do with my reasons for being here." He looked into the depths of his tea. "There is a group of, of students who work with me in local community service projects. Nearly two months ago, several members of that group were attacked while meeting in the library. One person was killed, two hospitalized, and one, er, briefly kidnapped. And one … she was found at the scene, with the body of the girl who had been killed, and, unfortunately, fled when challenged by the police." His eyes rose to meet mine. "We haven't been able to find her since. She left a hasty note to her mother, but she's been … 'off the radar', since that night."

"No surprise," I observed. "With the police hunting her, she'll be keeping a low profile."

"Oh, they aren't," he corrected me quickly. "That misunderstanding was dealt with almost immediately: the survivors' testimony made it clear that she'd had nothing to do with the attack, or the death." His next words had the faintest dry undertone. "I believe the official conclusion was that the guilty parties were 'gang members on PCP'. Quite a bit of that in Sunnydale, apparently."

I know about pulling information out of a source, and I know how it works. He had just said something meaningful, and was watching to see if I was one of those who understood the meaning. I wasn't, and that annoyed me, so I aimed my next words to sting. "So now you're, what, driving all over California trying to find her? The two of you are … close?"

"We are, yes, but not in the way you obviously mean." It hadn't flustered him even for a second. "In point of fact, I am in regular communication with her mother, keeping her apprised of the results of my search." He sighed. "Or non-results, at least so far."

"Wait," I said. "You're here, because of the murders we've been talking about, thinking that will help you find a runaway schoolgirl? What kind of sense does that make?"

"The logic is strained and roundabout," he admitted. "But the more familiar approaches have borne no fruit, and so I grasp at such straws as I can see." His lips bent in something that was both pain and amusement. "And Buffy has a, a deep and abiding sense of responsibility. These murders caught my attention, and so might have attracted hers as well. At least, that is the thread I am attempting to follow."

('Buffy'? Had he actually just said _'Buffy'_?)

"This is the biggest put-on I've ever heard," I said to him. "But you're not putting me on at all, are you?"

"I am not," he answered. "I am genuinely concerned about the deaths of these unfortunate, anonymous women, and genuinely hopeful that Buffy may have been attracted by the same articles that caught my notice."

And we had entirely dropped the subject of taking my information to the police. Maybe I hadn't been supposed to notice. Fat chance.

"In that case," I said, "we have some work to do." I pushed the manila folder across to him. "You can start with that, and I'll have more by the time I get off at eight. Are you staying at a hotel, somewhere we can meet?"

"No," he said. "I've not had time to make arrangements. Or cause, till now." He studied me with a seeming doubtfulness that I didn't understand. "I'm afraid that's immaterial, however."

I frowned. "I'm sorry, what?"

"The issues you have raised are, are provocative, but ultimately don't concern me. They still pertain to the upper-crust women currently missing, while my interest remains toward the two nameless women who were murdered." He shrugged, half-apologetically. "Nothing links these disparate strands except the article which caught my attention. In other words, the only connection between them is _you,_ and even that is tenuous and apparently coincidental."

This was unexpected, and I was still adjusting to the sudden change of direction. I could feel my face stiffening, but I did my best to keep my tone civil. "I see."

"I do apologise," he said, standing and picking up the folder of information. "You have been inordinately helpful, and normally I would feel, feel obligated, to aid you in return. In point of fact, the situation would normally call for further investigation on its own merits." He shook his head, sighed. "Currently, however, I have other obligations, and I'm afraid they take precedence. Over my own inclinations, even over the genuine debt I owe you. I'm sorry."

"Okay," I said. "Fine." I stood as well. "I guess we're done, then."

He looked for a moment as if he wanted to say more, but he didn't; he simply nodded with grave courtesy, and left. More than he seemed … and I had a hunch our business together wasn't finished yet.

Maybe more than a hunch.

Technically, I still had half my 'shift' to go tonight, but nobody really cared which hours I followed as long as I kept things running smoothly. I returned to the morgue only long enough to lock it, then I drove home: home being a small rental house, I'd found some years back that apartment living didn't agree with me. It was earlier than my usual schedule, but I straightened and arranged things for awhile, and spent some more time working out just what it was I needed to do next; and at last, when I felt sleepy enough, I finally went to bed.

Given the circumstances, I expected the next day to be busy. As it turned out, it would be quite a bit more than that.


	2. Part 2

Part II

I slept till mid-morning; then, after I'd had a brisk breakfast and gotten some personal business out of the way, I drove back to my workplace. Some of that was to make up for leaving early the previous night, and some to get a head start on wrapping up things for the weekend (I usually worked four days on, one off, but once a month I took a three-day weekend to even out my hours and keep them technically clear of overtime), but quite a bit was to get me back into the nerve center that was the norm for me. I had a broadband connection for my desktop system at home, but the newspaper office had information streaming through it all the time, not just news but data that hadn't yet been formed _into_ news, and there were times when that extra access made a big difference.

This time, there was something else. This time, my sanctuary — the Abyss, in the center of the labyrinth that few besides janitors and maintenance people ever penetrated — had a note on the door. It was one of those pink While-You-Were-Out memos, and the message read _Call me immediately. URGENT. – R.G._, followed by a local telephone number.

Well. Well, indeed. I settled myself in at my desk, sorted out my thoughts, and then punched in the number. The phone was answered on the first ring, he must have been sitting there waiting for the call: "Yes, hello?"

"Mr Giles," I said.

"Yes, yes, Ms Schoeren. I was actually about to go out, didn't expect you to show till later in the day and of course your employer wouldn't give out your home number —"

"Mr Giles," I said again, firmly. After his departure last night, I admit it felt good to be in control for the moment. "Your message was marked urgent."

"Yes," he agreed; then, a new note in his voice: "You've not, er … I take it, then, you've not yet seen the news?"

I smiled into the telephone. "I don't get the paper at home, Mr Giles; why should I? and I don't bother with the morning news shows, usually I'm still asleep. And I just got here, haven't had time to check the office feeds yet … What news?"

I don't believe it was my imagination, I think I actually could feel the tension on the other end of the line. Then Giles's voice, still with the kind of precision I was coming to suspect might be control over more active emotion: "It would appear that your issues and mine are not so distinct as I stated yesterday evening. One of the murdered 'bag ladies' has been identified … as the second of the prominent women to have gone missing. From the list you provided. I'm sure the police are moving mountains even now to ascertain if the other murder likewise corresponds to the other disappearance. I rather suspect confirmation won't be long in coming."

"They're … connected," I said, working for some control of my own. "The disappearances, the killings … they're, they're the same women."

"It would certainly seem so," he answered crisply. "I think we should meet. As quickly as possible, don't you agree?"

~ – ~ – ~

I had him join me in the Abyss, of course. No one would be aware of his presence, or care if they knew, I've had years to construct the kind of life that suits me and that life is solitary. More than that, my own personal Information Central was invaluable for the type of private investigation we were apparently launching. Even apart from the regular feeds that came in steadily, even apart from my ability to track the news stories currently in progress (too many people on our intranet were a bit too casual about password security, and I kept track of such things), the archives were an inexhaustible mine of stored data, of which I knew every passage and side-branch.

"Okay, the two missing VIPs," I told him once he had arrived and I'd set him up some desk space. "They were high on the up-and-coming lists for years, and for longer than that now they've had 'got there and staying there' status. Amelie Linden, the woman whose body's been identified, she was a celebrity gossip columnist but she did it so well that by now she was basically a newsmaker herself; she was one of the people you went to for a good quote to spice up a story, and she'd done a few television specials, she was a gateway if you want to get yourself set solid in the public eye. Danica Carlisle, the first woman to go missing? top-tier fashion designer, basically an infallible instinct for which way styles were heading or for making them go the way she wanted; if she's the other body, she went out on a high note, she was about to have a major show in Milan and the word is that nobody else had even a hope of keeping up."

"Yes, well," Giles said. "You said the proposal you submitted had only the two names. Were any others mentioned or suggested?"

"No, sorry." I shook my head. "It seemed to me that there were so many possibilities out there, I only needed to name off a couple of examples, let the actual writer do the final selection and follow it out."

"Ah. Why, er, if you'd not had specific persons in mind, why did you think in terms of the series being limited to women?"

I shrugged. "Couldn't say. Maybe it was just, the two top candidates had me thinking of females, or maybe I had some sense that a line of features about women at this level would carry some extra flavor of mystique or glamor."

"Mm." He nodded, but I could tell by the lack of focus in his gaze that his thoughts were elsewhere. "As it happens, then, _both_ of the articles that referenced these unfortunate women originated with you. I called that a coincidence, and such it still seems, but rather more pointed than I appreciated at the time."

I gave that some consideration. "Maybe not purely chance," I observed at last. "I think … I mean, Danica Carlisle was the one who _did_ make it into Connie's series, so when she disappeared — and then Amelie Linden, too — even though we didn't know anything then except they'd dropped off the radar, I sort of had them on my mind. The idea of pointing to them to contrast how _little_ publicity the murdered homeless women were getting — except now we know there's more to it than that — well, to me the 'coincidence' was that the women I'd mentioned had gone missing. Tying them to the dead bag-ladies, I guess you could say I came up with that because the first coincidence bothered me."

"Yes, I can see how it would do so." He pursed his lips, regarded me assessingly. "I suppose that we should investigate whether your … 'Connie' … might have some more direct connection to this matter; if she used only one of your suggested subjects, then only you and she would have known of the link to the other woman —"

"Uh … well, not exactly."

He lifted an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"The features editor would also know," I told him. "I sent that up to him — Alan Brady, just like on the old _Dick Van Dyke Show_ — and he was the one who approved it and passed it on to Connie. But, I can't see either of _them_ being involved, Alan's fifty-six and has three grandkids, Connie does mostly the society pages and is more into macrobiotics than any serious current issues." I shook my head. "What I'm saying is, these are _average_ people. Newspaper-average, anyhow. To imagine either one of them caught up in some kind of murder conspiracy, it's just …" I shook my head.

"Mm. Well, you know them and I don't. We shall have to consider them, but your opinion there must carry some weight." He drummed his fingers on the table, frowning slightly. "I wish I knew more of the physical details of the murders. If we knew _what_ killed these women, then —" He trailed off.

I looked at him; there had been something there … "What do you mean, _what_ killed them?" I asked him.

He started slightly, and then his eyes seemed to go vaguely opaque. "The, um, the _modus operandi_ and means, the forensic evidence, what weapon was used, any of those might give us some clue as to how to proceed …"

I found myself hoping he couldn't read me as readily as I could read him. He was lying, _again,_ and I didn't know why but some possibilities were beginning to suggest themselves. I let it pass by, for now. "I think I can help you with that," I told him. I swiveled to put myself at the main keyboard, brought up the screen, and began working my way through subdirectories. "George, he has the police beat, he's an old _Quincy, M.E._ fan and he loves to know the nitty-gritty on autopsy reports, he pays a guy in the coroner's office to fax him copies of really interesting stuff. The PD would stomp him flat if he ever published anything they hadn't officially released, but he knows better, he just uses it to give himself some informed context for, um, you might call it intelligent speculation." George was one of those who wasn't too militant about electronic security … but, honestly, who but me would even care enough to look, or have the means to do so? "Okay, good, I've found the report he got on the first victim, he scanned it in and saved it as a PDF. Probably the Carlisle woman, from what we know now." I looked it over with half my attention while I kept rooting through George's files for anything on the second victim (Linden).

The scan had been of decent quality but George never bothered with OCR, and I was never as comfortable with a flat image as with live text. Still, I could read it easily enough. "Hmm, yes, the public reports were a little vague, but … okay, victim died of asphyxiation due to crushing injuries, enough to break most of her ribs and puncture one lung while _massively_ traumatizing the other … except the lungs and several other parts of the torso were also penetrated by multiple stab wounds, maybe enough to kill in time, but no blood-bearing organs were pierced, so the victim lived long enough to die of the crushing injuries instead. So, umm, weapon was something pointed but not a knife, more like a tent-stake or a railroad spike — What?"

Giles had jerked at my last words, but recovered himself as I looked at him. "Nothing," he said. "Muscle spasm. Go on."

Right. "Well, death wasn't fast after those wounds, estimate is ten or fifteen minutes, but the coroner's opinion is that nothing further was done after the initial attack, whoever it was just stood there and watched her die. And then … whoa."

"Yes?"

"The, um …" I swallowed. "The heart was removed, post mortem. But not surgically, nothing that clean. Chest … _ripped_ open, just split from the outside and the two sides pulled apart like somebody tearing open a roast chicken, and … well, the language is more technical but the gist of it is that the heart was, was, gouged out." I looked back to Giles. "Whoever did this is seriously sick. I mean, purely _bad."_

"Practically demonic," he murmured in agreement; but his eyes, as was so often the case, seemed focused on something invisible to me.

He was hiding something, shutting me away, and I was about to call him on it but, "Okay," I said, "here's the second report, looks like George saved it in the wrong folder, he's sloppy that way. So, um —" I skimmed quickly over the document in front of me, and announced, "Pretty much what we saw in the first one, there's even an addendum that the consistency in MO strongly supports both killings being done by the same perpetrator. Only real difference is, he describes some unusual dental work."

Again the abrupt reaction, though not really a jerk this time. "Unusual in what way?" Giles asked.

"Nothing bizarre," I told him. "Just non-standard, specialized. They probably narrowed down which orthodontists do this kind of work and used that to identify Amelie Linden."

"Ah. Yes. With that as an indicator, the police should confirm identity on the other woman in short order." Giles's voice was pensive, deliberate. "When _that_ is announced, your colleagues may be reminded of your having named both of these local luminaries in your original profile suggestion. That could pose a problem for you —"

"It's worse," I interrupted. "Oh, God, it's worse than we thought."

"What?" He looked to me. "What do you mean?"

"There's another one," I told him. "The rest of this report — there was a reference to something, and I just read it to the end, and there's _another_ one. Body of a homeless woman found at the main landfill, this was ten days ago, she'd apparently got crushed inside the garbage truck that dropped her along with the rest of the trash, they figured she'd been sleeping inside a dumpster … She was so messed up, one of the deputy coroners signed off on cause-of-death without checking too close, but two more bodies got them wondering and so they pulled her back to check again …" I looked up, doing my best to keep my expression under control. "No heart. Somebody's definitely getting fired over this. But this happened _before_ any of the others. If she fits the pattern —"

"— Then she might have been simply unlucky," Giles finished for me. "Or … there might be another prominent woman whose disappearance hadn't been noted yet. Is there any way you might check for that?"

There were several ways, and I knew the systems and knew the people who filed the information that found its way into these archives, plus I had a few inside tracks of my own. I spread my net wider, went outside the paper's internal network and out into the wider Internet to follow out possibilities. Giles sat patiently, not interrupting or asking for updates or even fidgeting; I was doing the necessary work, and he wasn't about to interfere with that. Even more, it was as if he had experience with waiting when waiting was all that could be done, and had learned how to, basically, put himself into idle mode, husbanding his energies until they could be usefully applied. This kind of thing is rare (I have something like it, but in me it's more akin to personal detachment), and it raised yet more questions about this man who had somehow appeared in my life.

Just now, however, there were rather more urgent questions to be addressed.

It was more than an hour before I was ready to offer any conclusions, but at last I turned to him. "If the first dead woman _was_ another area celebrity, I think I've found the most likely candidate. Have you ever heard of Nicolette Herveaux?"

His smile was faint, but real. "I have, er, limited familiarity with American popular culture."

"She's a local author, one of those who made a hit with her first book and just kept going after that. She had a new wrinkle, writing about travel agents getting mixed up in mystery and suspense and usually some romance. Maybe a little bit of a rut, but Dick Francis has made mystery-and-horses work for nearly forty years, and Herveaux's stuff may not be great literature but her books are popular; two of them have been optioned for movie scripts and there's been talk of building a TV series around the overall concept."

He nodded, the first hint of impatience showing. "And, is she missing?"

"Maybe." I gestured toward the main monitor. "She was scheduled for a week's vacation at Cape Cod, right about the time that first body was found, so nobody's been looking for her. The thing is, I haven't found any mention of her in the papers _there_ — there's usually some little comment somewhere, So-and-So seen at such-and-such event — no big deal, and maybe not meaningful if it isn't there, but still. And there was supposed to be a book-signing today back here in the city, but now it's been postponed. If it _is_ her, they may just now be realizing she's fallen off the grid."

"Mm, yes." He was turning over the idea. "Would she have fit on your list?"

I blinked at him. "I'm sorry, what?"

"The concept you first proposed; you only gave them two names as examples, but you seem to have had a fairly specific idea of the type of individuals you saw as suitable subjects. If you had finished developing the list, if you had chosen to write the profiles yourself, would this Ms Herveaux have been among them?"

I thought about it. "Maybe. Maybe even probably. She definitely doesn't _not_ fit."

He nodded. "Very well, then, it might be time for us to attempt a, a different type of profile."

I was fairly sure I knew where he was going with this, but I wanted to confirm it anyhow. "What do you mean, exactly?"

"If you have indeed identified a third victim — except, she would have been the first, wouldn't she? — then we could begin to extrapolate from that. Which women might be _next_ approached, if these killings continue … and, I'm afraid, the current situation wouldn't lead me to expect them to stop. We could warn the prospective victims, so they might look to their personal safety or perhaps seek police protection. We might even have some sense of where to watch for the, er … the individual committing these dreadful acts."

That last part definitely called for further comment, but I was still stuck on what came before. "Police? I'm not really keen on calling attention to myself here."

He smiled quickly. "Nor I, but I'm sure that someone with your resources could find some means of conveying information without compromising your privacy."

He was right about that, I most certainly could. He was continuing, however. "Now, these three women: Amelie Linden, Danica Carlisle, and, er —?"

"Nicolette Herveaux," I supplied.

"Yes, thank you. Assuming their prominence, what things do the three of them have in common?"

I turned back toward the desk. "I can start checking background on them —"

"We'll want that, of course," he broke in, "but first I'd like to hear your, er, unfiltered perceptions."

"What?" I frowned. "Why?"

"First impressions can sometimes capture the key elements," he told me. "Too, these are public women, and it may be that our killer is motivated by some aspect of their public _personae_." He gestured toward the monitor. "We'll certainly go into further depth, but first I wish to hear what you already know of them. What most people here would know."

I thought about it. "Well, let's see … All three are relatively young women to have achieved the success they have, I think late thirties. All three started up the ladder twelve, fifteen years ago, and none of them exactly rocketed to the top but they kept climbing pretty steadily after that first rung. I don't believe any of them were married … in fact, I'm not sure they've _ever_ been married, you'd hear about boyfriends and 'seen in the company of', and I think somewhere along the line there would have been extra comment if there were a husband in the background." Hmm, what else could I tell him —? "They've moved around comfortably enough in society, especially the last ten years, but none of them are _from_ society, or I'd have heard. And none of them have serious money — not the way their current circle measures money — but they're _really_ comfortable; probably at least one of them has managed millionaire status by now, maybe all three."

"I see," Giles said. He had that faraway look again, but at the same time he was more intent than I'd seen him before now. "Interesting, and suggestive …" He looked up to me. "I believe I should like to see you finish your list now."

I frowned. "Look, I've told you the public knowledge about them —"

"No, no." He waved that away. "Your present quandary began when you recognised that you had named, in your initial proposal, the two women who had disappeared. Now there is a third, and you have acknowledged that she would accord with the perhaps half-formed conditions by which you would have drawn such a list." He tapped the desk where I sat. "Very well, then. You say you would have profiled five, perhaps six women. We have three names now. Write out three more, as you would have done if you followed out your original thought."

"I can't …" I fluttered my hands in weak protest. "I can't just …"

He leaned toward me, insistent. "The concept came from you. The first names came from you. It may be that, in some way we can't yet understand, you and the killer are following something of the same selection process. So finish the list: not blindly, not at random, but following your natural impulse." He tapped the desk again. "Thirty seconds should be sufficient, we don't want you to overthink it. Begin."

I stared at him, trying to formulate an answer or even to just pull my thoughts together. Then I picked up a pen and began writing on a small memo pad. First the three names we already had; then another; then another; then I crossed that one out, wrote a different one in its place; then, after maybe ten seconds' consideration, one last name.

Giles seemed to read it in my demeanor or body language. "Finished?"

"Yes." I shook my head. "This is not what I normally think of as proper investigative technique."

"Perhaps not." He reached across, turned the pad to where each of us had a diagonal view of the list. He pointed. "Why did you cross off this name?"

"Martha Allen? She just didn't quite fit, she's forty-six years old and she's spent nearly twenty-five of that building up the charitable foundation she heads. Striking personality, she'd be worth profiling on her own, but … I don't know, as soon as I wrote her name down I knew it was close but not right."

"Ah." He nodded at the list. "And these others?"

"Well, we have Luciana St Claire: television producer, golden touch, splits her time between here and Los Angeles; you know how a new TV series seems to have maybe a twenty-five per cent chance of lasting a full season? well, the shows she green-lights have more than _seventy_ per cent success rate, and most of those go three seasons or more. Lots of boob-tube hotshots talk a big game, but she delivers, and consistently, and she's been doing it since the mid-Eighties. Debbie Brown: software developer, just got her own company started, there's talk of an IPO; people like to call her 'Jill Gates', but it's maybe a little early for that. Finally, Clarissa Howsten, she started a small publishing house that landed some big-name authors, leveraged that to land some more, and now it's a prestige thing and big names are courting _her_."

Giles was nodding. "An impressive panoply of names, with an impressive record of achievements. Do they all fit the same profile as the first three?"

For some reason my reaction was defensive. "Look, you asked me to run this out off the top of my head —"

"And you did precisely as I requested, and now I am assessing the results. So: are all these women in their late thirties?"

"I never said that _meant_ anything," I protested, exasperated. "It was just the first thing I thought of when you wanted to know what they had in common."

"And I'm not judging, I simply want to clarify. Are the last three women within that age cohort?"

I shook away my annoyance. "Debbie Brown is twenty-eight, I believe. The others, I think they fit."

"Ah. And the progress of their success?"

"They, I don't know …" I thought about it. "Well, about the same: steady, solid climb for the last several years … except for Debbie again, she just started showing up in the news within the last six months."

"I see. Marital status?"

"Um, let's see: don't know, don't know …" I sighed, looked to him. "Debbie Brown is separated from her husband, but she _is_ married. I'm crossing her off one line at a time, aren't I?"

"There is that appearance, yes. Now, what were your other criteria …?" His brow crinkled as he thought. "I can, can only recall one: financial success, in the general range of one million of your dollars."

"They all qualify there, but you _did_ forget one. I said none of them came from society, and that's true of the last three, too. I mean, Martha Allen is in the Register, but I already ruled her out for other reasons."

"Yes, indeed you did." He was studying the list again. "Something else strikes me, however. Listen." And he read off all the names, starting from the top. "Danica Carlisle. Amelie Linden. Nicolette Herveaux. Luciana St Claire. Debbie Brown. Clarissa Howsten." He looked to me. "As Xa–… as a young man I know might say, 'Which of these things is not like the others?'"

I shook my head. "We just went through all that, didn't we?"

"I don't mean the individuals as such," he said. "Simply the names. Look at them again, read them off to yourself."

I did, and then again. "Huh," I said. "With 'Debbie Brown' sitting in there, it sort of jumps out. That's the kind of regular name we see all the time. The others, though …"

"The other names are distinctive," he agreed. "Euphonious. Impressive, even … or, perhaps, designed to impress." He looked to me, one eyebrow raised. "Might one say … pretentious?"

"They're …" Again I shook my head. "Okay, yes, they're the kinds of names you might see in particularly florid romance novels. So, you think these women are being targeted because they have _exotic names_?"

Giles gave me a smile. "That might indeed be the case," he murmured. "But my own thought was something else." He stood up. "Well, as I said at the beginning, we _do_ need more comprehensive knowledge of the backgrounds of all these women. You're familiar with this city, not only its history and personalities but its norms as well, so you should be the primary investigator for that. I have a, a colleague, however, who can gather data from other channels; I'll have her relay any findings here, so we can pool her information with our own." He sighed. "I shall also need to contact my hotel, I'm afraid."

"Hmm? Why?"

"I had already completed morning check-out," he explained, "when I saw on the lobby television the news item that changed my plans. I used one of their desk phones to try and call you here, and left a message instead; when you called back, I was considering whether I should come here and attempt to contact you directly. Given the events since then, I shall need to reserve another room, I would expect for at least one night and perhaps longer."

"Ah. Got it." I looked at him. "You know how, in a mystery novel or movie or TV episode, the murderer always turns out to be someone who's already been introduced to the audience?"

He nodded. "I am familiar with the convention, yes."

"So how do I know that's not _you?"__ I asked him._ "Come to check on what the police know or, heck, even get _me_ to help you pick out your next target?"


	3. Part 3

Part III

His eyebrows went up. "You can't know, of course. And any attempts I made to assure you otherwise would, naturally, be likewise suspect." His smile, while ironic, seemed to hold genuine amusement as well, and no malice that I could see. "If you're truly concerned, it would probably be prudent for you to avoid associating with me further. There are, to be sure, genuine murders taking place, so I wouldn't be offended if you made such a decision."

"Right," I said. "Just wanted to make the point that I _had_ thought of it." I sighed. "Look, you don't have to go back to the hotel."

He weighed the words, his gaze steady on mine. "No?" he asked.

"If we're working on this together, it's probably better if we keep close," I told him. "My house has a spare room. You're welcome to stay there, if you'd like."

I was getting in deep, I knew that. But then, that had been true for awhile already. This way, I might be able to exercise some degree of control, or at least keep up with what was going on. I didn't believe for a moment that he was an actual murderer, but Rupert Giles was definitely _involved_ here, if only by his own interest, and I needed to keep an eye on him.

Not that he was particularly hard on the eyes.

He was already nodding. "A practical suggestion," he said. "I accept. Now, I believe we were about to begin seeking deeper background on our subjects —?"

We kept on into the early evening, almost as late as I would have stayed on one of my normal work days, though my actual hours vary somewhat. Giles got information from his 'colleague', some of it very interesting indeed and the depth of detail extremely disturbing (could you really dig up _that much,_ online, in just a few hours? that was frightening, and at least part of it had to be illegal, and I would seriously hate to have any such spotlight aimed at me). He and I compared notes, worked up and followed out on various hypotheses, and found increasing evidence to support the notion that my off-the-wall list had some solid substance to it. I put together the anonymous warning Giles had recommended, to the two remaining women on the list _and_ to Nicolette Herveaux, in case her seeming absence should turn out to be a simple misunderstanding; I could easily have managed a private, secure delivery myself, but Giles insisted on passing it on to his still-unnamed hacker colleague, where it would be routed out through a series of anonymizers.

Once we left the Abyss, Giles wanted to look at the locations where the first two known dead women had been found; there was no telling where the body that wound up in the landfill had originated, but his colleague had dug the sites of the other two killings out of the police department servers (which were _supposed_ to be firewalled, damn it!). He was determined that he had to see those places himself, in case there was something that wouldn't have any conventional meaning for police but that he would recognize … from his time at the British Museum, no doubt. After seeing his car, _**I**_ insisted that we take mine instead, and he acquiesced readily enough. There was nothing new at the body-finding sites, though he put close study into some symbols spray-painted on one wall before concluding that they were, as they appeared to be, common street graffiti. Then we had a decent supper at a chain restaurant while we reviewed what we had learned so far.

"The new stuff from the coroner's office helps explain why nobody recognized the dead women as our missing 'beautiful people'," I observed, leafing through the reports that had been relayed to my underground sanctuary for printout. "The skin condition is so bad, you'd have to compare X-rays of the bone structures to see the correspondences. It looked like years of neglect and abuse and bad nutrition, but it couldn't have taken more than a few hours to get that way; what could _do_ that? And of course, the rags they were wearing were nothing like their normal clothes, that and the skin and the way their nails were messed up — _and_ the smell, it must have been pretty strong for the coroner to make a note of it — would be why they put the women down as homeless. They were off on the ages, though: those were estimated as late forties to mid-fifties. Not the way these women would have wanted to be remembered, you can bet on it."

"Yes," Giles agreed, absently buttering a roll while we awaited our entrées. "Every bit of new data seems to raise yet more mysteries. The severe deterioration of these women's physical condition, apparently while they were still alive … inexplicable." He put down his table knife, his eyes meeting mine. "The matter of the names, however … _that_ is provocative."

"Okay, I'll admit it, your hunch there was a good one." Only, not a hunch; he'd noticed something, evaluated it, and his analysis had led him in a fruitful direction. The man was _sharp._ "Actual, legal name changes, though … that, I didn't see, at most I would have expected a professional alias or a Doing-Business-As." I shrugged. "At least we were able to mark off Debbie Brown for good, with that being the name on her birth certificate."

"More than that," he corrected mildly. "This latest development establishes conclusively that these five women — assuming there aren't more who haven't yet come to our attention — share some immediate, personal connection."

"Because they all filed their name change petitions within the same few weeks?" I thought about that. "That does look kind of like people acting in concert. But is there some way — I mean, I can't figure out why, but might there be _some_ way — that the killer is going after them _because_ they all did their name change about the same time? that the change IS the only link they have, rather than pointing toward one?"

Giles shook his head. "No, no. The theory is plausible on its face, I'll grant you, but it doesn't withstand closer scrutiny. These five women, if their given birth dates were accurate, were all within seventeen months of the same age. Their petitions were _granted_ over a period of nearly three weeks, but were all _submitted_ within two days, at the same courthouse. Furthermore, the same steady professional success that first brought these women to your notice, seems to have begun within four months of the name changes. And, beyond that … you seem to have some awareness of their careers, so perhaps you can tell me: have any of them ever worked, or socialized, together?"

"I … don't know," I said. "I mean, surely there's been _some_ overlap over the last fifteen years?"

"One would expect there to be," he agreed. "And I'll certainly have Willow search for any evidence of such, but —" He stopped abruptly, coughed, then went on. "Five women, of roughly the same age, living in the same city, moving in many of the same circles — and don't forget, a novelist whose works were being adapted for visual media would have ample opportunity to interact with a publisher and a television producer — for none of these women to _ever_ meet and work together, would almost require deliberate avoidance of one another."

(Hmm. So, had he actually made a slip there, or wanted me to think he had? I didn't see him as that naturally devious, but you don't want to take things for granted. If genuine, that would mean that his pet hacker used 'Willow' as a code name. Which might or might not indicate female, it could just be a fan of early Ron Howard.)

"Well, if you're right, that would seem to mean that whatever connected them had to remain secret." I took a sip of water. "Because attracting any notice might result in … well, in what's happening now? I can't make any sense of that. If it were some witness-protection kind of thing, they wouldn't still be living in the same city, and they wouldn't have embarked on such high-profile careers."

He frowned slightly, though I couldn't tell if that was from perplexity or because he didn't like something about what I had just said. "Whatever the nature of their as-yet-unknown compact, it seems to have begun nearly fifteen years ago; and, insofar as notice is concerned, it may be that they wished to avoid, not personal fame, but any record of their prior association."

I gave that some consideration. "That tracks logically, I suppose. If, fifteen years ago, five women pulled off some big heist or really lucrative con job, they would certainly need to keep from drawing attention to their _group,_ even if they could afford to become well-known individually." I looked to him. "And, you know, that could also tie in with how they died. Whoever is going after them doesn't just want them dead; he's degrading them, turning them into nothing, pulling them down from the top of the heap and making them into society's garbage. That's the kind of personal revenge you might see from some of the old mob bosses: you steal their money, they don't just take it back, they don't just make you pay, they somehow … I don't know … _strip away_ everything you managed to build up by ripping them off."

"Perhaps," Giles said, still with that little frown. "Perhaps. I'll agree that this bears some of the elements of a personal vendetta, and there's certainly something striking in these women being _converted,_ from the elite to the dregs." He shook his head. "It can't simply be about money, though."

"No? Why not?"

"I'm thinking of two things, mainly," he said. "First, though they all seem to have come almost literally from nowhere, these women have been prominent in the public eye for years; it simply seems improbable that any recognition of prior grudge could take so long to come about, particularly one that encompassed all five of them when they have apparently avoided associating with one another. Second is … is the _nature_ of their success. All of them are — or were — in professions requiring ability, talent … _creativity._ Novelist, fashion designer, columnist, television producer … only in the case of the woman with the publishing house would initial money have been a significant issue, and even there you made it clear that the real success came from her managership." He sighed. "The type of persons who could succeed so spectacularly in such endeavors, are not the type to believe that financing with some 'big score' at the beginning would guarantee any such success."

Now it was my turn to sigh. "So where does that leave us?"

He looked up, smiled. "That leaves us with our dinner, which I believe is arriving now."

It was, and we spent the next few minutes settling into the meal. He had opted for roast beef and baked potato, with a side salad: a safe, conservative choice for an establishment with whose reputation he wasn't familiar. I had gone with a favorite of mine (steak and shrimp, steamed broccoli), and a mug of draft beer to wash it down. Neither of us was living on the edge here, but it was solid food and it would get the job done. Giles opened his baked potato and administered butter and salt to suit himself (he nudged aside the small cup of sour cream with an expression far too well-bred to be a grimace), and watched as I went at my steak. After a minute he said, "Our unanticipated partnership has proceeded with a smoothness and facility I could not reasonably have expected. This is welcome, and fortunate, but it occurs to me that I know almost nothing about you."

I finished chewing my bite, and swallowed, which gave me time to choose my answer. "If you're really interested, you can always have your personal Internet ninja spin up a dossier for me."

He smiled at that. "You did as much with me, immediately upon our first meeting, so one could say you've already broken the ice there." He shrugged. "Even if I elected to follow that course, however, I would still find your own testimony more … more significant. How one feels about one's life and experiences tends to make itself felt in such a self-presentation, and that can often carry as much meaning as — or more than — the bald facts."

I'd cut another bite for myself while he spoke; you don't let good meat go cold. I finished that without any rush, but likewise didn't drag it out. "Well, I'm not a native," I told him. "Finished journalism school in 1979, came here from Nebraska for an internship. — the Carter years, remember, jobs weren't that plentiful and a lot of new grads were willing to do an unpaid stint to show we were worth hiring."

He nodded. "And, clearly, this approach paid off for you."

"Well, no, it didn't exactly." I shook my head. "Competition was a little too stiff at the paper I was aiming for. I networked like crazy, though — I think they were even starting to call it that by then — and when my first try didn't win through, I was able to work some contacts and get a trial job where I am now."

"And it was to my unearned benefit that you were there when I came to make enquiries." He addressed his own meal, but in smaller increments, so that he was able to go on in a moment. "So, almost twenty years ago, and here you remain. Have you maintained fruitful contact with your family?"

This time my reply was briefly forestalled by a swallow of the beer. "None left by now. My father died while I was in college, my mother seven years later. And no siblings." To get out ahead of what might be coming next, and to exert a little control, I went on, "My private life has been close to nonexistent since then, and it turns out that I haven't really missed it that much. I mean, I'll accept pleasant company if it's offered, but I don't exactly go looking for it, and there just hasn't been that much the last several years." I looked to him. "How about you?"

His smile was small, but not guarded or alarmed. "Much the same in my case," he said. "My work is interesting, as well as demanding, so that socializing has been a, er, substantially lesser imperative for me. I've not sought personal involvement in some time, and usually avoided the possibility when it might be present; that is to say, where you've described yourself as generally uninterested in such things, I have been more nearly … averse. More as a matter of habit, I think, than of policy, but it became rather entrenched all the same."

I nodded understanding, but didn't push for detail. Then he seemed about to say something more, but then didn't, and I raised an eyebrow. "Yes?" I asked him.

"I … I, er, that is —" He stopped, regarded me in long, piercing assessment before subsiding with a sigh. "There was something," he said. "Just in this past year. We started out in disaffinity, and moved from there to disagreement and on into active argument. And then we found … points of commonality. Worked together, helped one another, began to associate on a regular basis …" His mouth firmed. "It was unexpected," he told me frankly. "I wasn't watching for such a thing, nor prepared when it arrived with no warning; but, for some months, it was … heady." He shook his head. "It … did not end well."

_Been there, done that,_ I thought, but the sentiment might have come across as dismissive, so instead I asked, "So … dashed on the rocks of reality, different career goals, what?"

_This_ smile showed no amusement or pleasure. "Her family," he said in reply. "They had a strong claim on her loyalty, and this … this loyalty … forced a rift between us. Ultimately, the complications from that conflict separated us." He considered what he had said, then added, "Permanently, and beyond salvage."

I could have tried to follow this out further, or commiserate with him, but instinct warned me against that. Women can compare stories of their past romantic disasters, and maybe men can do the same with each other (though, doubtless, rigidly phrased in some kind of stoic, excruciating man-code), but it just didn't seem advisable for me to try to respond in those terms. Maybe if I had gone first … but I hadn't, and some things I wasn't inclined to reveal in any case, so instead I said, "And now you're trying to track down a former student, only you've been sidetracked in investigating some mysterious spree killer."

He accepted the change of subject with equanimity, if not obvious gratitude. "Life takes us where it will," he observed, "our own choices exerting perhaps less effect than we might wish. You, for instance, acknowledged yesterday that you had found it necessary to transition away from your lifelong intent of being a reporter —"

So we talked some about that, my cumulative recognition that I might have the desire but not the particular balance of different capabilities that could make it possible, and the adjustments I had instead made to keep myself in my chosen world, albeit in a different role. Then we discussed our tastes in music, then spent some time comparing anecdotes of our experiences in higher education.

We weren't flirting, or even — really — feeling one another out. It was more a matter of drawing up charts of the territory ahead, well in advance of any intent to decide whether to proceed. The awareness had been there between us for some time, not from the beginning but certainly after we had actually begun working together. Each of us knew what the other was doing, knew also that some further trigger would be required before we tried to make anything of it, if ever we did. Maybe it was our age, maybe it was personality … or maybe it was a recognition of _likeness_ in personality, with each of us determined to be just as deliberate and controlled as the other.

We remained in control, both of us. We dealt with one another as adults — as deliberate, thinking, uncommitting adults — and eventually the meal was done and we left the restaurant. I drove him back to where he had left his car (and I marveled again that anything so battered could have made it here from not-quite-Los-Angeles without simply disintegrating somewhere along the route), and then he followed me to my home.


	4. Part 4

Part IV

He parked behind me in the driveway and I led him inside, he with his luggage, a personal valise and a larger athletic-type duffel that — I could tell by the set of his body as he carried it — was heavier than it looked. "That's the spare room," I told him, pointing, while I set our accumulated research on the little writing desk next to the bookcase. "You can just drop your bags in there for now, would you like something to drink?"

He took his cue and set his luggage down just inside the door, came out to join me at the point where the living room gave into the diminutive kitchen. "I could perhaps use a nightcap," he answered me. "What do you have?"

I'd actually meant coffee, fruit juice, or soft drinks, but I opened the doors to one of the cabinets. "There's bourbon, and … well, bourbon. I don't get company that often."

"Bourbon and water will be quite suitable," he assured me. I fixed him one, then went back out into the living room. I sat in one of the armchairs, and he took the one just across from it.

He hadn't said anything, but I had seen his gaze flick to and away from my empty hands. "I try not to drink at home," I explained to him. "I went through a rough time some years back, caught myself drinking more than I needed to. Not genuine alcoholism — you saw me have the beer back at the restaurant — so I'll keep the bottle here for the rare occasion when I have guests. But I just … have the feeling that drinking at home wouldn't be good for me."

"Entirely your choice," he said. "And I would be the last to criticise a responsible prudence." He settled back in his chair, took a sip of his drink, and nodded approval.

"Okay," I said. "I suppose we've done as much as we can right now, and I figure if you had any other ideas you wouldn't have come here. What were your thoughts on tomorrow, though?"

"Yes, well," he said. "In the normal course of things, I would have already attempted to speak to either or both of the two remaining women, but I'm afraid I forestalled that by my insistence on sending them a warning." He shook his head in some irritation. _"Very_ muddled thinking there, I've let myself fall into slack habits. By this point they'll have very likely contacted the police, and seeking them out would call distinctly unwanted attention to ourselves." He sipped his drink again, considering. "I believe I may have been thinking unconsciously of the Sunnydale police force; _they_ would hardly have been responsive enough, or alert enough, to pose us much problem. I'm fully aware that their practices are, er, atypical, but let myself forget the implications of our present situation being _outside_ Sunnydale."

I was nodding. "Okay," I said. "I guess I can see talking to the potential victims as the natural next step; however they may be mixed up in this, there's no question but that it's … _about_ them somehow." I shrugged. "But, if going to see them is off the board now, what _do_ we do next?"

He gave that some thought, fingers drumming absently on the arm of the chair. "I'm not sure," he said at last. "Unless we wait to see if another killing should provide us with better information — which I am deeply loath to do — it would seem that making some type of contact with these women is an unavoidable necessity. Fortunately, the timeline we have seen, assuming that the Linden woman was killed at roughly the time her vacation was scheduled to begin, would indicate a period of nearly five days between victims; meaning, we still have at least two days in which to take some action." He sighed. "I suppose I should try to formulate some approach by which they would agree to meet us without police oversight. At the moment, I am devoid of inspiration. Perhaps I'll have a clearer eye in the morning."

"All right," I said. "Well, if you need to look over any of the material we've gathered so far, I've put it over there." I indicated the writing desk.

"Yes, I see," he said. He stood and went to the desk, riffling through the stacked folders while he continued to speak. "No doubt by tomorrow Willow will have more facts for us to add to these —"

He stopped. I watched, waited, said nothing. He was looking at the bookshelf, not the desk, his eyes moving over the titles displayed there. He turned his head to look back at me. "Ah," he said.

"Yes?" I answered.

"_Bristow's Demon Index_," he read off, facing the bookshelf again. "_Hebron's Almanac_. _The Dichaltus Compendium_. And, yes, 4th edition of _Blood Rites and Sacrifices_." He returned to the armchair and sat down again, his eyes level and controlled as they met mine. "I understand the 5th edition is supposed to have corrected some glaring inaccuracies in their description of Tyristhean rites."

"Really?" I said. "I … suppose that's helpful."

"So, are these volumes mementoes from the, er, the 'Goth days' of your rebellious youth, or … are you a believer?"

The plain fact of his having recognized the titles told me much of what I wanted to know, which was why I had contrived to move his attention in that direction. "Working in my business, you hear things," I told him. "Find out things. _See_ things, sometimes, even if you're not necessarily sure what you saw. After awhile, it starts to paint a picture. After a longer while … it starts to seem like a good idea to learn enough that you can tell if something is one of those things you don't want to investigate any further."

That level, direct gaze hadn't wavered. "I see," he observed. "And, given this, this unexpected depth to your knowledge, what is your judgment of our present situation?"

He'd batted it back to me, then. Fine. "I really don't know what to think," I said, just as evenly. "But with what we're seeing and what we've learned, I have to wonder if … if these women are being killed by a demon."

"Ah. Well." He picked up his drink, tossed back the rest of it. "The evidence is less than conclusive. As it presently stands, however, I rather think that they are."

~ – ~ – ~

I had expected that our discovery of mutual knowledge (in my case, confirmation of something I had increasingly come to suspect) would be a springboard to new revelations, or at least further conversation. Giles demurred, however. "I stayed up very late last night," he explained, "doing further researches and investigations, then made an equally early start this morning. It's not the first time I've done so, but I'm afraid I'm beginning to edge into diminished function. Absent any immediate urgency, I think we may proceed to better effect if I acquire several hours of solid sleep … and, given the labours we may face tomorrow, I believe that's best begun soonest. And so, good night."

I hated to put it off, but what he said made sense. More than that, though, there was an increasingly strong hint of hidden iron about this man. The deference, politeness, even seeming vagueness, had been deceptive: whatever was going on back in Sunnydale (and I was getting a sense of what type of goings-on that might be), it was clear that he was a _leader_ there, and it couldn't be easy for anyone to say no to him. Certainly I wasn't going to attempt any such thing myself without a very good reason.

So we went on to bed. Separately, of course. Even if the thought of _otherwise_ was somewhat less distant than it had previously been.

I woke early in the morning and showered quickly, wanting to be ready to begin as soon as Giles was. I tend to move through my life by deliberate choice, so it wasn't entirely comfortable to find myself feeling impatient and resentful of the delay. I was in the middle of something here, of an importance I couldn't begin to express to him, and I wanted to get _on_ with it. I channeled some of that edginess into beginning the preparation of breakfast, and was gratified when Giles came out of the spare bedroom, rubbing at his eyes. He was wearing trousers and a t-shirt; his hair was more tousled than ever, he was showing some stubble, and without his glasses he had to squint slightly to focus on me, which made his gaze more direct. The overall effect was surprisingly masculine, and I took a deep breath to keep any response from showing. "Good morning," he said to me, then gestured toward the bathroom. "I heard the shower. If I may —?"

"Feel free," I assured him. "I was quick, so there should still be plenty of hot water."

"Thank you," he said, and went on in.

He took no more time than I had (less, probably), and when he was done he returned to the spare room, emerging minutes later in fresh clothes to join me at the breakfast table. I was wearing only my robe, but I was decently — even modestly — covered, so I set a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him and then sat down on the other side of the table.

Remembering the twist that had introduced itself yesterday morning, I had the radio on and tuned to the local news; if nothing else, it would help to know if any further identifications had been announced. (The police might have clamped on a lid after that first one, but some things are hard to keep secret.) Last night we had talked through dinner, but I wasn't in the mood for anything so leisurely right now; I powered through my breakfast, even a couple of slices of toast, and waited till Giles was at much the same point before speaking. "Okay," I said at last. "You've had time to recharge your batteries, and we're ready now to launch out into another day … and, now that we've admitted we both know about the maybe-supernatural angle, I am _really very interested_ in what thoughts you may be having about it."

He finished the last of his orange juice before answering. "I'll begin by confessing that I wanted some time to consider just how deeply I wished to explore these issues with you." He gave me a small, quick smile. "Even admitting to such a possibility is more than most people are able to do, and so I wanted to devote proper attention to how best to proceed from that point."

"I'm a big girl," I told him. "I don't need to be protected, and even if I did, I don't see how ignorance could protect me."

"I don't mean to patronize you," he assured me. "Even if we can resolve this situation without direct peril, however, there is another potential aspect I wouldn't wish you to disregard." I gave him a questioning eyebrow, and he went on. "On our first meeting, you referred to your below-basement offices as 'the Abyss'. I couldn't help but be reminded of one of Nietzsche's better-known quotes, from _Beyond Good and Evil_: 'when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'"

"Huh," I said. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Doubtless it doesn't mean to us what Nietzsche meant by it," he responded. "My point, however, is that there is a reality here, distinct from and in many ways inimical to the comfortable 'reality' known by most. It is a dark, forbidding world, containing forces and entities that care not at all for us or actively seek our destruction … and they are, very many of them, _aware."_ He looked to me with sober, earnest intensity. "When you see them, when you notice them, when you attend to them, there is a substantial possibility that their attention may likewise turn to you."

I looked away. "Can't say I want that," I admitted. "But … this isn't something that happened and I can just pretend not to notice; it's happening _now,_ to people I … well, I can't say I know them, but they're part of MY world. Am I supposed to do nothing because there might be some risk attached to it?"

"There is," he insisted. "People die of these things; as, in fact, they are dying now. You may be more involved already than you wish, for your having independently produced the list that is apparently being followed now would suggest that you are … attuned … to these forces in a way that could all too easily make them equally aware of you." His voice was level, his expression grave. "It is your decision as to whether you involve yourself further in this matter, but I must be certain that it is a … an _informed_ decision."

I shook my head. "I'm already in it," I told him. "One way or another, I'm going to see this through to the end."

"Very well," he said. "If indeed there is a demon preying on these women, its actions cannot by any means be random. The similarities they share, the fact of their having chosen new names, even the renown they all have come to enjoy, seem to indicate something particular to them."

"This carries extra punch in the news because they're famous," I mused, following out on what he seemed to be getting at. "But their success, their celebrity, that's what's attracting this demon somehow?"

"Such things are not unknown," he acknowledged, "but I was thinking in rather more specific terms. Last year there was a brief spate of news items about a particular fraternity at a small private college in Sunnydale; even apart from the local perpetrators, a number of former members who had attained high status in the financial world, suffered huge losses, or were arrested, or in at least a few cases committed suicide. Those stories shut off abruptly, but in your occupation — and with your, er, unconventional knowledge — you might have paid them some attention at the time. Do you remember that?"

I thought about it. "Maybe," I said. "Not about Sunnydale, but I do remember the thing about girls being murdered at a frat house: Delta Kappa Zeta, or some such?"

"Or some such, yes," he confirmed.

"That business _did_ drop out of the news awfully suddenly, now that I think about it." I rolled the memory around in my head. "Funny that nobody started asking why. But, you're saying a demon did that, too?"

"In a sense. There was indeed a demon, but the unfortunate young women were being sacrificed to it by the members of the fraternity." He tilted his head, regarding me appraisingly. "In return for which, they were rewarded with immense material success."

"Right." I nodded. "And you think these women did something like that, back in the Eighties."

"There are certain elements to this situation that turn my thoughts in that direction." He shrugged. "Even apart from the Delta Zeta Kappa affair, legends and even popular literature tell of people bargaining with diabolical powers to receive earthly fortune; Faust is the best known example, but hardly the only such." He took off his glasses, reached for a pocket handkerchief to begin cleaning them. "Of course, we must consider the possibility that these women are themselves being offered as sacrifices, with the demon or some other supernatural doom being directed at them by an outside party; women of their stature would be considered potent offerings in some circles. All told, however, this has the hallmarks of their being called to final account by the entity with which they made an exceedingly unwise bargain."

"It does have that sound," I said, agreeing. "You wonder why anyone could possibly do something so dumb … but, look around you, people are always finding ways to convince themselves that the odds won't catch up to them. Human nature is why newspapers never run out of headlines."

"Indeed." Giles moved his chair back from the table. "Well, I suppose I can begin researching to see if any invocatory demons reward their supplicants in the manner we have seen, or dispense to them such an end when the reckoning comes. I can use your _Bristow's_, and I brought some other texts with me …"

Yes, those would probably be in the athletic bag he had brought in last night. "You do that," I said, standing. "I'll go ahead and get dressed."

In my bedroom I couldn't stop myself from glancing at a few outfits, in the back of my closet, that might have prompted him to look at me differently. I told myself sternly that this wasn't the time for such things, and dressed myself with an eye to practical utility. On the other side of the door, Giles might well be zeroing in already on the correct demon and the correct rite and the best documented means for testing or detecting or nullifying or vanquishing the inhuman killer that was now operating in my city; he had already demonstrated a keen intelligence and an impressive depth of knowledge — or trained intuition, or judgment springing from comprehensive familiarity with this area of arcane study — that surpassed anything I could have been prepared to see.

He had wanted to be certain that I understood what I might be letting myself in for. Despite my confident assurances to him, I couldn't help wondering if I had, in fact, jumped into more than I could handle.

Enough. I didn't have time for a crisis of confidence here, couldn't afford doubts. "I have a few more books tucked away," I told him, exiting the bedroom. "A little too beat-up to stick out on the shelf, and some of them are just folios that have lost the bindings —"

I stopped. He wasn't paying any attention; or rather, he was but not to me. I could see his face, the rigid fixity of concentration, and I crossed quickly to where he sat and now I could hear what was coming out of the radio:

_"— police department is refusing to comment, but several independent reports indicate that the well-known TV producer triggered a personal alarm before vanishing from her midtown penthouse condo. She makes the third high-profile woman to have disappeared within the past week; the body of one, celebrity columnist Amelie Linden, was later found in a derelict neighborhood, though it was several days before her identity could be positively established. A series of anonymous calls to various news organizations claim that the 'homeless' women found dead and abandoned during the same time period are, in fact, the vanished media personalities. City officials are calling for an investigation into police procedural errors in this matter, and spokesmen for the other missing women are demanding to know if any of them are, in fact, among the unidentified bodies currently languishing in the city morgue._

_"To recap: Luciana St Claire, successful television producer and rising network executive, is missing from her home following an emergency response to an alarm there. After fashion maven Danica Carlisle and gossip queen Amelie Linden, St Claire is the third well-known woman to disappear in the last week —"_

It went on from there, but the rest was repetition of what had already been said. Giles sat staring at the radio, his jaw clenched. His fists as well, I saw. I laid my hand on his arm, saying, "Rupert —"

"I was wrong," he said, ghost-soft. "The five-day interval … I misunderstood, or miscounted, or miscalculated, and now another woman is gone. Doubtless dead already, taken while I was nattering over roast beef and sodding potato!"

"No," I told him. "No, listen to what they're saying." I pointed at the radio. "The alarm they're talking about, that went off around five-thirty yesterday evening. We were still at the newspaper building then, we didn't leave till more than an hour later. It's not your fault, we didn't know enough yet, we were still gathering information … we still _are_ gathering information. _It's not your fault."_

He shook me off, angrily, but I knew none of that was directed at me. "I'm so bloody _tired_ of failure," he snarled, pushing himself to his feet. "So everlastingly weary of being a step behind, of having the cues fall into place after it's already too bloody late. Tired of having bodies laid at my door —" He stopped and laughed abruptly, an ugly sound. "… oh, yes, laid at my door or elsewhere, all due to my arrogance and stupidity and incompetence. Jenny, and Kendra, and Buffy gone too, and on and on and on —" His fist crashed down on the table. "I'm bloody _sick_ of it!"

"No, no, don't say, that, no." I couldn't understand why my voice was shaking this way, but I couldn't stop. "You're not to blame for this, you're not, you're not!" God, I was about to start crying, I was out of control here! but I put my hands on his shoulders and made him face me, still babbling over and over, "It isn't you. It isn't you. It isn't. It isn't."

He stood stiff under my hands, not wanting the contact but not willing to shove me away. And then I felt the tension go out of him, and he sighed and slumped slightly, and I _was_ wiping away tears now. He reached up to take hold of my other hand where it lay on his shoulder, and our eyes locked and I felt the breath catch in my throat, and —

It was there then, it was there between us, a living thing, we were only inches apart and I could have moved into that space, moved toward him, and he would have moved to meet me. That was the moment, raw and urgent and more real than I could have imagined, it was _there_ and all I had to do was lean forward just a few inches —

And I didn't. It was too unexpected, had flared from nothing with no warning at all, and before I could adjust, it slid away and was gone. "Yes," Giles said, himself again. "Well." He released my hand, and didn't actually step back but he was _away_ from me now, distance appearing between us like a force field. "I apologise," he said quietly. "I should not have … have subjected you, to my personal tempests."

Stupid, stupid, _stupid!_ It had been there, it had been right there in front of me and I had just stood there like some quivering rabbit. I swallowed my self-loathing and gave him a shamefully shaky laugh. "I guess it's just … been that kind of week," I said with desperate, lying cheer. "Better to, to get it all blown out in advance, right?"

"Yes," he agreed, turning his face just slightly away. "Yes, of course. I shall … comport myself more properly henceforth, I assure you."

He might as well have gone on and said the rest out loud: _Nothing like this will ever happen again._ I would have hated him for that, if I didn't already hate myself so much. Sick as he was of failure, I was just as sick of being the deer in the headlights whenever faced with the actual possibility of possibility.

Never again, I swore to myself as he moved back toward the desk and its heap of books. I had been caught off guard, and I had frozen, but I was done with that. I had learned, I would be ready, and I would _act_ if I ever had another such opportunity.

Or if I could create one.


	5. Part 5

Part V

As if to banish even the memory of his brief loss of control, Giles became a brisk, focused whirlwind. Maybe his subconscious mind had already sorted through the main issues and likelihoods while he slept, because once begun he proceeded quickly, decisively, with set purpose, listing factors and characteristics on a sheet of note paper while he searched through his books and a few of mine, even making a brief phone call (long distance, but he reversed the charges) to clarify some no-doubt-significant point. He and I had worked together well enough yesterday, but he was on another plane now and moving in a higher gear, and my presence seemed irrelevant if not quite a distraction. Except for the phone call and some occasional mutterings, he barely spoke, and never to me: not even shutting me out, but narrowing in on the task before him with intense, exclusive concentration. It was disconcerting, even intimidating, and again I got the sense of a combat leader operating on a field unknown to most of humanity, and carrying out his role with pitiless, implacable practicality.

At last he looked up to me with eyes that seemed to fully register my existence for the first time in over an hour. "I shall need certain supplies," he told me, in a peremptory tone that softened with the next words as he finished coming back from the place where his mind had been. "The establishments where you acquired your specialized collection, might offer some possibilities, and I suppose your, er, your telephone directory may also be of aid in this."

I drove him, since I knew the city and still wanted to be involved in his activities here as much as possible (and I wasn't about to ride in _his_ car). Only one of the bookstores I had used in building my 'specialized collection' had any of the materials he wanted, but he found the rest — or workable substitutes — at three small shops he had selected from the Yellow Pages, recognizing the most promising ones by way of some form of insider's knowledge I couldn't have hoped to duplicate. Once satisfied, he ordered me to proceed to the main offices of Howsten Publishing, having pulled that address also from the phone book.

"The office does have morning hours," I confirmed for him while we took the elevator up from the lobby, "but according to what I could see in the background files, Clarissa Howsten herself rarely comes in on a Saturday. And, with everything that's going on and the warning you sent her, she's sure to be fortressed in at home today."

"Very probably," he agreed. "However, if indeed she is part of the demonic compact which rebounded upon the others — and the legal change of name certainly tends to group her with them — then the forces which have operated to her benefit will have left the strongest traces in the location in which her success has manifested itself. Certain details in the reference texts are less than fully, er, detailed, but of the known contractual demons, only three have collection practises that even remotely resemble what we have seen in the coroner's reports." His focus wasn't as all-consuming as before, but it was still powerful and daunting. "The most probable would be one of the Tlak-mengu species, and I can use a minor incantation on the Gortot granules to test for indications of Tlak-mengii influence."

"All right," I said, working to keep everything straight in my head: what he was saying, what I had learned before his appearance, what we had unearthed together, and the implications threading through it all. "And will identifying it tell you how to deal with it?" Somehow I was sure that this man would have solid ideas on how to fight the thing we were facing …

He shook his head. "More than that. If we're on the wrong track, I'll want to know it as quickly as possible. But, yes, which type of demon is involved will tell me the proper counter-measures to begin." He flashed a grim smile. "Also, I believe I may be able to buy some time if our supernatural perpetrator has indeed accelerated his schedule."

I could definitely see that timing would be an important issue in all this; with four gone, it was hurtling toward an endpoint. What effect our efforts here might have, that was yet to be decided. "So what do we need to do?" I asked.

Howsten Publishing, for all its rising prestige, occupied less than an entire floor of the downtown office complex where we now were. Giles found an empty conference room that another business sometimes shared with Howsten, and locked us in for privacy. "We should be done before we're likely to be interrupted," he told me as he pulled arcane materials from the overstuffed satchel, "but still we must be as quick as we can. There, if you'll light those candles —" I followed his directions, listened at the door, watched as he proceeded swiftly. After a soft chant in a language I didn't recognize, Giles grunted satisfaction when the diagram he had laid out in coarse, gritty powder shimmered and sparkled. "Tlak-mengu, very good. Now, a decoy glamour to keep the creature occupied …"

"Wait, wait," I interrupted. "What do you mean? What are you about to do?"

"The reaction of the granules confirms the residue of Tlak-mengii energies here," he said, barely glancing at me while he continued to extract and arrange the items he would next be using. "I mean to artificially augment those energies, turn them into a, a beacon which will draw the demon's attention. Even once it knows the beacon is false, that will still serve to obscure the senses by which it would normally home in on its final target."

I had nothing to say to that, contented myself with watching. He moved with confident certainty, placing crystals and staging ingredients and opening one of his books to the proper passage. Would this accomplish what he said? distract the demon, save the fifth woman until he could … do something further? I couldn't know, despite my urgent recent study this was his area, not mine. It would all depend on the accuracy of his information, the relevance and skill of his spellcasting, and perhaps other factors that hadn't yet been brought out into the daylight.

This chant was longer and more involved, with what sounded very much like invocations (to entities, I hoped, that were kindly disposed toward us or at least not hostile). Something, incense or another substance that operated with the same general results, made my skin prickle in a way that I didn't like at all. I found myself wishing earnestly that I could be elsewhere, but couldn't see any graceful means of extricating myself at this point. A breeze stirred in the closed room, and I instinctively reached out to flip open the lock on the doors —

— but Giles's voice brought the chant to an emphatic close, he snuffed out the candles with moistened fingertips, and it was done. I still felt that faint, crawly itch, but insisted to myself that it was all imagination. "So that's it?" I asked. "Clarissa Howsten is … shielded?"

"For several days, at least," he said, nodding. "The offices will close here within a few hours and won't open till Monday. I should be able to take, er, terminal action by that time, and if not we can send a further warning message for her to avoid this location." His eyes were preoccupied while he repacked the various items he had used. "Now that we know with certainty that this is a Tlak-mengu, the next step will be to gather what I shall need to summon the demon myself, keep it properly warded and bound, and kill or permanently banish it. That should involve … hmm …" He frowned to himself. "Some of that might be difficult to locate here, I'm not familiar with the local magical community. Better, probably, to make a call to Sunnydale and arrange for an overnight express delivery."

"Sounds like a plan," I said. "You can call from my place." He glanced up, and I went on. "We got done quick enough that we can grab some lunch now; after that, well, as I mentioned I don't have company very often, but I wouldn't mind picking up enough supplies to make us a nice dinner at home."

He considered it, his eyes on mine. Whether he saw it as an overture, a peace offering, or just general comradely hospitality, I had no way of knowing, but after a moment he nodded assent. "That is most agreeable. I can continue to research, and plan, and by the time my necessary materials arrive we may have more useful information upon which to formulate our final course of action." A faint ghost of smile appeared. "I hope you're not too, um, too enthusiastic with spices. You'll have heard of the British predilection for foods that others find bland."

"Don't worry," I assured him. "I'm not particularly daring." A beat, then, "Not with cooking."

No, _this_ was me being daring.

He took it with neither avid response nor obvious withdrawal, which I decided to count as a win. We had a polite, noncommittal lunch (less reason for encouragement), and I left him at my house while I did the necessary shopping. I came back with pork chops, ingredients for a modest salad, a sauce that — if prepared properly — would have a decent depth of flavor without risk of extravagance, and a bottle of wine that cost maybe five times as much as the rest together. In for a penny, as they say.

When I arrived back home, Giles was already at work; he looked up long enough to acknowledge me, then returned to his books. Remembering the restaurant last night, I had also picked up some tea for him in my shopping trip, though I seldom drink it myself; I looked through the cabinets until I found a teakettle, which I washed out, filled, and put on the gas ring at the lowest setting to begin gradually heating up. I spent another few minutes preparing a marinade for the chops, and then went into the bathroom for a fast, cool shower; the afternoon had warmed up and I'd broken just enough of a sweat while I was out to make me crave feeling fresh again. Once I finished and toweled off, I was in no hurry to go back out. Giles would still be immersed in research, due either to personal dedication or as a shield against a repetition of _that moment_ … I didn't know which, and I wasn't in a mood to try and figure it out. I stood under the vent, letting the air from the A/C blow across my still-damp skin to cool me further, and studied my body in the mirror.

I had no reason to be ashamed of what I was seeing, even if_ FHM_ would never use me for a pictorial spread. I'd put on a bit of weight, of course, as I moved out of my thirties, but I had a fairly active metabolism and no rampant appetites, and so the overall result was a general softening of lean lines, still well short of anything that would come across as flab. My hair wasn't as dark as it had once been, but there was no obvious gray yet, just a mild 'dustiness' that would, at most, appear to be a skillful frosting job. My complexion remained relatively smooth, and the lines that showed could plausibly be counted in the 'character' column rather than as explicit marks of age. The only clear imperfection — small, but noticeable — was at my belly … and, as my mother might once have said, _"Anybody who's looking at you that close, he already likes what he sees."_

… Was that what I wanted?

Rupert Giles had appeared in my life from nowhere, unexpected and unsettling and bringing with him certain issues and complications that were more than mildly unwelcome. My life had altered significantly with his arrival in it, and I was still some distance yet from coming to terms with (or even fully grasping) just how far the effects would go. He was, clearly, well experienced and even adept in a world that was still a mystery to me outside the blurred fringes and a few clear, isolated central matters; he had come here on a mission that was probably connected to that world (I hadn't asked, but it was fairly obvious that it was the hints of demon activity, in the story I had initiated, that had first attracted his interest), and would almost certainly return to it — and leave — once our business here was finished. He had dealt with tragedy, but not let it stop him; he was an active presence, even a crusader, where in my own life I had devoted substantial effort to attracting no more notice than I could decently avoid. For all the several similarities between us, we still could hardly be more different.

Who was this man? And why did I care?

I dropped my sweaty clothes into the laundry hamper, put on my robe, and went out again. Giles either didn't notice, or registered my presence without feeling that it called for reaction. I could have taken that as dismissal, and felt insulted, but instead it was as if he … belonged here, as if he had settled in to the point where the normal routines felt, well, normal to him. A place comfortable enough that he could take it for granted without even noticing that he was doing so.

In the kitchen, a thin plume of steam began to seep from the teakettle. I crossed over and turned up the heat; a couple of minutes of full boil, and I would be ready to steep the tea and submit it for approval. I'd left the bottle of wine standing on the counter next to the knife block; I would decant it about the time I began preparing dinner, but that was some hours ahead yet. The tiles of the kitchen floor were cool under my feet. I turned to look at Giles, still working at the writing desk. He'd unbuttoned his vest, removed his tie, even rolled his sleeves up a few turns, but he didn't look relaxed or even casual: still a scholar, but one so fixed on the study now before him that formality of dress simply faded to unimportance. It was as if I was seeing the man distilled to his essence, and for an instant I wondered if this would be how I always remembered him.

I watched him, and he somehow felt me watching and looked up … and just like that, it was there again between us, the current, the awareness, the _moment._ Our eyes were locked, and I took a half-step toward him, barely a shifting of my feet, but he pushed his chair away from the desk, preparing to stand. To move to join me or to move away, I didn't know which, but this was the chance I had sworn not to let pass again, so I pulled loose the sash at my waist and let the robe fall open. He had risen to his feet now, but merely stood where he was, his eyes moving over my body and then back up to meet mine. His expression was grave, calm, composed, and I couldn't read what was behind it so I took another step, I might fail but I wouldn't fail by indecision —

And then we were no longer alone, something else was in the space between kitchen and living room, coalescing into solidity and reality as smoothly as the image on a television screen coming into focus. I gasped and fell back, and ochre eyes held me in an unblinking stare. The thing stood half a head taller than I did, though the proportions were twisted and unhuman; thick spines projected from the chest and upper arms, over skin like daubed clay, and tremors of muscle movement rippled through the misshapen body. It spoke, its voice greedy and gloating and liquid like the reverberating echoes of bubbling slime at the bottom of a steel cauldron: "Jane Schoeren … _I know your name."_

~ – ~ – ~

I snatched up the boiling teakettle and hurled it at the demon, and the thing bellowed pain and fury as scalding water splashed its upper body. I had caught a glimpse behind it of Giles leaping away, not toward us but not toward the door, either, but there was no time to think about that, my hand fell on the bottle of wine and I juggled it to catch hold of the neck, then swung with all my strength. The end of the bottle struck the demon's forehead with a heavy, meaty _chunkk!_ but didn't shatter, I hadn't broken the seal yet and so I was wielding a hard, liquid-filled club. I drew back for another swing, jumped backward as the thick-fingered hands reached for me, then another flash of motion/sound of impact/howl of rage, the demon wheeled away from me and I saw Giles swinging a light single-bladed medieval axe, had that been inside the heavy duffel he'd carried in last night? I struck again with the bottle, and this time it did break, against the back of the demon's head, showering us both with pricey (for me) wine that I would never get to sample now. My unhuman assailant spun back to me, its roar now a solid cacophony of chitin blades scything against one another, but Giles swung again from the other side, the axe-head biting into the cartilage-corded neck.

The demon hadn't been ready for two of us, apparently hadn't even known a second person — armed, experienced, and determined — was here, and its position between us meant that it couldn't face one without the other striking from behind. At least, that had been the situation for the first few seconds. I stabbed with the broken bottle-neck but missed by half a foot, it was too short for effective use, I dropped it and looked around frenziedly for another weapon. My brain was moving at electric speed but _not_ peak efficiency, I was about to snatch off a paper towel and light it on the gas burner in an attempt to set the demon on fire, when in the same fraction of a second I realized 1) the wine drenching my enemy wouldn't ignite, its alcohol content was far too low, and 2) I was reaching _past_ the knife block for the paper-towel holder.

I pulled out a long-bladed knife and slashed at the demon, and a moment later I had a second knife and was stabbing with both hands. My intervention had come barely in time, while I was briefly weaponless the demon had caught hold of Giles and pulled him into a brutal hug, and as it turned back to me and Giles fell free, I saw that the spines had pierced the flesh of his shoulder and upper chest _(yes, yes, the puncture wounds on the dead women)_. He hadn't been incapacitated, though, lying on his side he brought the axe around in a double-armed ankle-level sweep, chopping the demon's leg out from under it. The thing went down, and we just kept up the ceaseless attack, slashing and hacking and stabbing until our foe was a twitching, oozing, ruined heap on the floor. Giles wasn't satisfied; he worked at the neck with the axe, alternating sides, until the demon's head was completely severed … at which point, the body faded away in exact reversal of its fade-in appearance, leaving the two of us alone, gasping, in the wrecked kitchen.

Giles stumbled and went down on one knee with a groan, and I darted to his side. "You're hurt!" I exclaimed, seeing the blood well out of the wounds on his chest and shoulder and suddenly realizing I didn't know how deep they went.

"Only slightly, and, ah …" He made a sudden noise that was equal parts cough, wheeze, and laugh, and looked off to one side. "You're, er, you're … uncovered."

Well, yes, I was. The robe gaped open, and in fact in the last moments it had fallen off my shoulders and was hanging from my forearms; I was effectively naked, but I'd been too busy to notice and, honestly, not really caring much even now. But, okay, I pulled it back up and belted it again, and then at Giles's direction I went to get the first aid kit from his car. He wanted to be treated in the bathroom, but that was too small, I pulled him into my bedroom where he could lie down properly. The kit, once I opened it, was startlingly complex and inclusive, almost what a combat medic would be packing. I got him stripped to the waist, cleaned the wounds, and put wide adhesive bandages on top of them.

By the time I was done, Giles was frighteningly weak, and I didn't like his color, either. "This is more than we can deal with here," I told him, and began to try to help him sit up; from there, I'd work on getting him to his feet and out to my car. "I need to take you to a hospital."

"No." He pushed me away. "There's too great a chance that a hospital would recognise my injuries as very like those sustained by the murdered women. I can't afford any such attention." He lay back on my bed, his strength sliding away again. "And you needn't fear," he went on. "These effects are … described in the literature. The thoracic spines on a Tlak-mengu carry a, a quasi-paralytic agent. To, to incapacitate its victims so they can't effectively resist. Non-lethal in itself, and I also didn't receive a full dose."

I regarded him with some doubt. "So … you're saying you're okay?"

"Assuredly. By tomorrow I'll be fully mobile again … and, and when I return to Sunnydale I can avail myself of follow-up care without … without drawing any of the notice I would attract here …" His voice trailed off, his eyes closed, and within a minute his breathing had slowed and steadied and fallen into a regular, even rhythm.

Could I rely on what he had said? He had no obvious reason to lie — it was his life that would be endangered if he did — and he had shown that he knew what he was talking about. And it was absolutely true that we didn't want to chance being connected to an increasingly lurid series of local murders. There were risks no matter what I chose … In the end, though, what he had said made sense.

So, what came now? He had come investigating the possibility of a demon (hoping that his 'Buffy' might be following the same trail). He had found that demon, and dealt with it once and for all. Would he feel that his business here was finished, or would he decide that there was still something here worthy of further attention?

I stretched out beside him, moving up to mold my body to his; laid one arm across him and my head on his chest, listening to his breathing and the reassuring beat of his heart. I stayed there, not moving, while the light outside the bedroom curtains faded to dusk and then dark. Letting it be, because morning would bring a new reality.

And then, hours later, I rose without disturbing him, and dressed, and left my house with him still sleeping there.


	6. Part 6

Part VI

I heard him at the door. He didn't knock; he would have seen my car in the drive, so he knew I was here, and apparently felt no need to request permission to enter. I sat with my back to the door, and didn't turn around as I heard him come inside, I only raised my glass for another drink. He came into the little kitchen, walked past me to sit at the chair opposite me at the small table.

"Good morning," he said evenly. Properly polite, of course.

"Hey," I answered. "Glad to see you're up and around. No ill effects, I hope?"

"I'm quite well," he said. I saw his eyes take in the bottle in front of me. Unless he had paid particular note to the liquid level in it night before last, he couldn't know how much of that was missing now. He might have reason to suspect, though. "You … were gone when I awoke."

"Uh-huh. Had some things I needed to take care of."

"Yes, I'm sure." His gaze was steady on me. "I was, was concerned, at first. But, your vehicle was gone as well, and there was no sign that you had packed for a permanent departure, so I concluded at last that you had left voluntarily and would return in due course."

"Hmm." I thought about that. "When I got back and _you_ were gone, I figured you might have decided you were all done here. But, now here you are. So does that mean you were out looking for me?"

He shrugged without looking away. "I checked at your place of employment. And at the Howsten Publishing offices, and in the vicinity of Clarissa Howsten's home address … I had some, some concerns, as regarded her well-being."

That brought a smile, but I doubt that it looked pleasant. "I'm pretty sure she has nothing to worry about." I looked at him. "I mean, we killed the demon, right?"

His response was immediate. "I wasn't thinking about the Tlak-mengu." He watched to see how I took that, nodded when I showed no surprise. "Yes, as I said, I had some concerns about Ms Howsten. My main reason for leaving your house, however, was that I had calls to make, and it seemed … discourteous, to use your phone when you were to be the subject of my enquiries."

I took another swallow from my glass, then picked up the bottle and poured myself a few more fingers' worth. "Ah. Very considerate of you." I tilted my head to one side. "Or, you could just ask me."

He sat silently, studying me with that characteristic reserved control. "In time, perhaps. First, I believe I would prefer that you hear some of my findings regarding you."

"I'm all ears," I said to him. "And nowhere else to be right now."

"To begin with, you have _not_ ever undergone a legal change of name." He made a vague, dismissive gesture. "Furthermore, your professional career was just as you described it to me, so you have not been the beneficiary of the excessive good fortune and extravagant success we have seen with the other women. There is, in fact, no evidence of any factor that would rank you among them. And yet …"

"And yet," I finished for him, "your demon showed up looking for me. Treated me as a target, just like them."

Giles's eyebrows rose. "I hope," he said carefully, "that you are not intimating that I was responsible for that."

"Not what I meant." I shook my head. "But go on, you're on a roll here."

"I did most of yesterday's research from my own materials," Giles said. "On reconsideration, however, it seemed to me — and I confirmed it, on checking — that your copy of the _Dichaltus Compendium_ does in fact contain a brief introductory overview of the Tlak-mengu species. That is … an extremely unlikely coincidence."

I smiled at him over the top of my glass. "We do seem to be overflowing with coincidences around here."

"This is not a laughing matter," he said with some heat.

"Am I laughing?" I shook it away. "Look, I was serious. If you have questions, go on and ask them."

He nodded, set his hands flat on the table between us. "Were you part of a compact with the dead women?"

"Not by any knowledge I had or any choice I made." I felt my mouth hardening. "They weren't particularly nice people. I wouldn't have wanted to have anything to do with them."

"Really? They seem to have been well regarded by their peers."

"Maybe what their peers saw wasn't the real truth."

He was right on top of it. "And the real truth?"

I was tired of dancing around the edges, but despite what I had said, not quite ready yet to go straight at the underlying facts. "This demon that was going after the women," I said to him. "The one they used to give them a boost into the high life. What would somebody have had to do to make that kind of bargain with that kind of demon?"

He frowned at that. "A summoning ritual would have been relatively simple, though of course one would need to exercise certain cautions, to keep from coming within the creature's reach." He thought about it some more. "To effect such an extensive, long-term contract, however, particularly one upon which the Tlak-mengu would collect so forcefully once it was able to do so …" He shook his head. "That would require a casting of considerable power and exacting formulation. I … haven't the texts that would provide more explicit information."

"I wasn't asking for a user's manual," I told him. "Just raising the question. So, okay. Fifteen years ago I was already at the newspaper, and when my career goals didn't work out, I made a lateral shift to the morgue. And, working with the archives, organizing them and footnoting them so I could tie things together and retrieve them in the proper context if anybody needed something, I built up a pretty good sense of the overall sweep of things in this city."

"Yes," he said. "You explained all that upon our first meeting."

"Just bear with me. Anyhow, about six years ago there was a brief item that passed through the paper — never got any traction for some reason, there was never any follow-up so that's all there ever was — about some old properties being torn down to make room for a parking garage, and inside the trash in the basement area of what had once been a coffee house, the workers found a skeleton. A human skeleton." I stared into my drink. "A very … very small skeleton. A newborn."

Giles sighed, heavily. "A blood sacrifice, an infant sacrifice. Yes, _that_ could have been used to leverage a quite advantageous contract with one of the Tlak-mengu …" And then he stopped, his face stiffening as his eyes came up to meet mine. "Oh, dear God."

"Funny thing," I went on. "I'd been something of a regular at that coffee house, years before. I was still trying to make it as a reporter then, and I didn't have much of a social life … there were these girls, five of them, just a few years younger than me; two worked there, and the others lived nearby, they'd banded together to make it in the big city, and I had that in common with them even if not much else. We never got close and I never really wanted to, but sometimes it was just nice to have somebody to talk to. Especially when I had to deal with a … particularly difficult personal situation."

"Your abdomen," Giles said. He had gone ashen. "When your robe was open, when you were exposed —"

He'd seen the stretch marks, yes. "Now, this wasn't the Fifties or even the Seventies, there were resources available. Still, I was alone then, and I wasn't coping too well, and I hated having anyone look at me like I was a victim. And Betty said the hospital where she worked part-time had a policy that a newborn could be dropped off anonymously, no questions asked, and they'd handle it from there. You heard about that kind of thing back then, and I think some places still do it: another resource for women who don't feel like they have any choices. So I set it up with Betty, and I gave birth in my little apartment, and I cleaned the baby — it was a girl — and wrapped her up and handed her over to Betty, and walked away without ever looking back." I shrugged with deadpan nonchalance. "And then I spent a year or so drinking more than I should have, and had to give up on my first career choice, and I finally came to terms with things and found a niche where I could make it all work. And then, years later, this little partial news item drifts past me, and suddenly I'm seeing a lot of things in an entirely different light."

"They … used your child as a sacrifice?" Giles whispered. "You're positive?"

"Checked through the hospital," I said, nodding. "It wasn't really legal — confidentiality issues — but I had favors I could call in and strings I could pull, and they're not as militant about protecting what isn't there. Which it wasn't, because no infant, newborn or otherwise, had been left at that hospital within six months of my delivery date."

He'd already had a general hint in the right direction, courtesy of the Tlak-mengu's appearance in my home, but now he was assembling the pieces. "You tracked them down," he said. "And you killed them all." Then he paused. "All but one."

I let that pass. "If you can believe it, finding was the easiest part. It was the names that did it: they had to give their names to get the contract, and names are power for demons, you know that, but they'd figured a way around that. They had it set up in advance and filed the name-change petitions as soon as the deal was made, and the demon couldn't _find_ them after that. Ingenious, actually, even if I wouldn't have wanted to bet my own life on it. But they weren't hiding from the human legal process, so once I got that far, I was able to work out the rest." I gave him a tight smile. "It took me a lot longer to figure out _why_ they'd done what they did, and then how. But, like I told you, by then I'd started to learn some of what goes on in the shadows; plus, back in the coffee-house days, Cleo — she was one of them — was heavy-duty Goth, talking about Black Masses and the Spirits of the Interregnum and things like that, and she'd do things occasionally to show off … At the time, I passed it off as stage tricks for the gullible, but that gave me a clue once I knew enough to look." I stopped long enough to take another drink, a solid belt this time. "And the _really_ hard part was finding the right demon: the one they owed, the one that wanted them. That, by itself, took me more than four years."

He was nodding. "I … appreciate the difficulty. But, what sacrifice did _you_ need to make, in order to establish your own contract with the Tlak-mengu?"

"Nothing," I told him. "I didn't have to do a damn thing, and you want to know why? It was because I wasn't asking for anything. I was the one giving service to _him._ Giving him something he was hungry for."

"The names," Giles said. "You provided these women's current names, and then sat back while they were butchered —"

"Oh, no, that wouldn't have worked at all." He gave me a _Really? how so?_ expression, and I explained, "I turned over _one_ name. And then waited for that woman to be taken, and news of an unidentified body to surface — because he'd sucked away from her everything she'd used my daughter's blood to build — and then I started planting the right stories, and then I summoned him again and passed over the next name."

"I see." He was regarding me levelly, with something very like understanding if not agreement. "You wanted them to know, to know that doom was coming. That was the reason for the stories, and …" He drew a breath. "And for working with me. To continue, subtly, to spread the realisation of just what was happening."

"I wasn't sure who you were," I said to him. "Or how much you knew, or how able you might be to mess it up if you learned too much. It seemed like a good idea to keep you close so I could … steer you, while the rest of it played out."

"Hence the sudden shift in timing," he said. "My very appearance prompted you to accelerate the schedule. You manipulated me at every step." His expression went deceptively mild. "So, it was all of it a ruse, then?"

_No._ "Yes," I said flatly. "Every part of it."

"But, still, you allowed my presence to disrupt your scheme, at least a bit." He must have seen that I didn't understand, because he went on. "You miscalculated, overplayed. Somehow you let slip your own identity to the Tlak-mengu, and it came to collect you before you had completed your vengeance."

"Actually, I figure Betty did that. She was always sharp, and with the other four gone she'd know it wasn't any of _them_ aiming their demon back at them." Or maybe I had let some of my personality seep into the warnings I'd sent, or not completely covered my tracks in the anonymous tips to police or news organizations … "No, she would have had the most reason to remember me, so I'm pretty sure it was Betty."

"Currently known as Clarissa Howsten." He shook his head. "You must know that I can't permit you to kill her as well. I belong to an organisation, however, which will be more than willing to bring her to account for such a terrible crime —" He stopped, because I was laughing. "I have … said something amusing?" he asked.

"You can't know," I said to him. "Look, these women … they changed. Fifteen years of climbing the ladder, fifteen years of accumulated glamor … or _glamour_ …" I shook my head. "My point is, I hadn't really known them well before, and once they started to make the news under their new identities, I didn't recognize them. I had to follow the paper trail, and the paper trail started with the name changes, and … Do you remember what I said, a little bit ago, about there being a lot of coincidences?"

He nodded cautiously. "I do recall, yes."

"Well, I got smacked with a doozy right at the beginning. I remembered five women, but I found _six_ name-change petitions clustered together, in that same time period. Clarissa Howsten was the first one … but she wasn't one of the five, she had nothing to do with it. Just pure, crazy coincidence."

He didn't like that, regarding me with wariness. "You're … quite certain?"

"I wasn't, not then. And I wasn't willing to take the chance, there might have _been_ a sixth woman I hadn't known about. So the first time I summoned the Tlak-mengu, I gave it her name. And it didn't work, the thing couldn't touch her because she didn't belong. She wasn't part of the bargain that had been made."

His mouth was tight. "And, having ascertained this, you placed her name on the list you wrote out for me. As a red herring. Which … which means that, when I tested for residual energies at the Howsten offices, the positive result was because of _you,_ from your dealings with the demon." (_Bingo!_ Which would also mean his distraction beacon had been less than useless. Not that it mattered much, by that point.) He was shaking his head slowly. "If the last woman sent the Tlak-mengu after you, that means she's still alive, and now that we've killed the original demon, your assassin is no longer available to you." He sat back. "I'm sure one as determined and, and resourceful as you are, could arrange some other means, but you won't be allowed the opportunity. I shall make the necessary calls and insist that wards and warnings be placed about you immediately, and I intend to oversee your activities personally until I know those strictures are in place."

"Be my guest," I said to him. "Only, the thing is … Just as I was getting back to my house, I heard the first report on the radio, and more details have been coming in since then. It seems that Simone Fontenay — the actress, she's built up a solid resumé over the last dozen years or so, I heard talk of an Oscar nomination for her role in _Callie's Heart_ — well, she was killed by a hit-and-run driver while she was out jogging this morning." I shook my head regretfully. "They say she'd been in seclusion for the past week, ten days, but apparently she'd had enough of that and felt like getting some fresh air and exercise. Tragic."

His expression was set, but I couldn't have begun to describe what I saw behind those eyes. "Hit and run," he repeated carefully. "The vehicle used would, would certainly show the marks of such a collision."

"You're probably right," I said. "Of course, the car might have been stolen, hot-wired, and then abandoned after it hit Fontenay. The driver would have had to be careful about fingerprints, but …" I shrugged.

He slumped in his chair, and seemed to … age, a bit. "Simone Fontenay," he said at last. "Betty?"

"I believe the profiles do say she was born Betty Munt. I don't blame her for going with something more impressive; looks better on a marquee." I took another sip. "They'll probably use the newer one on her tombstone."

He stood up from the table. "I shall make my report, as I told you," he said heavily. "My superiors may feel it proper to initiate action against you. I won't specifically recommend that, but I … won't have the heart to argue against it. You clearly fall within their purview: you systematically killed five women, and used supernatural means to bring about four of those deaths, so —"

"Oh, I did more than that," I broke in, looking up at him. "You know I said I didn't want anything from the demon, when I called on him? That's not completely true." I could tell Giles wanted to look away, but I wouldn't. "I didn't want anything _from_ him … but I did ask him to take his time with them. To make it slow, to make it last, to make it _hurt."_ I laughed thickly. "He loved that part, he really did."

Giles leaned toward me suddenly. "Why?" he demanded, voice hard and eyes fierce. "Why do you say this? Why have you _told_ me these things?"

There was something real there, like the first time I had touched him and felt yearning leap up inside me, and it jolted me out of the ugly flippancy I had been directing at him till now. "So that someone will know," I answered softly. "They're all dead now, they're gone, and I want someone to know. What they did. How they paid for it. How they _deserved_ to pay." I shook my head. "What it all meant."

He looked down at me, troubled, the anger fading. "In your original plan, you would have been the only one to know, would you not?"

"I would," I agreed. "And I was ready to live with that. But this is better."

He stood silent. I had no more to say, it was all out there now. "Those above me," he said finally, "will judge your case and … will do what they decide to do. I truly don't know what that will be, but it is, is not what most concerns me now." I didn't look up, but he went on insistently. "The Nietzche quote I referenced earlier … before the warning about the results of staring into the abyss, there is another line just as well-known: _'When you fight monsters, take care that you do not become a monster.'_ "

"Okay," I said. "Little late to be worrying about that now."

"That is precisely what I fear," he shot back. "These women did a terrible thing, and I do not sorrow for them. They deserved everything that befell them, and more, and I freely admit that I would have been … _offended,_ if they had received only such punishment as the laws allow. What you did to yourself, however, in meting out to them the retribution they fully merited …" He drew a long, shaky breath. "Some doors, once opened, do not close again. Some injuries do not heal. In following the course that you felt necessary, you … marred yourself, scarred yourself, did dreadful damage to your very soul. This is not a price I would have wished to see you pay."

He wasn't reproaching me; that was genuine regret I heard, and something like grief. For me. We had worked together and fought a common foe and saved one another's lives, and I had lain next to him in my solitary bed and ached for all that had never been and would never be, and I looked up at him and said the only thing I could say:

"Worth it." I locked his eyes with mine. "Worth it, and worth it, and worth it. Whatever it took, whatever it cost, I'd do it all over again. If there were a dozen of them, I'd still be killing." My mouth was stretching into something ugly, and I turned away from the horror I could see in him, but the final words came out low and hard and defiant. _"It was worth it."_

He stood there another moment, then he stepped around the table and walked past me. I heard the front door open, and close again behind him, and I picked up the bourbon bottle and filled my glass to the rim.

—

end


End file.
